Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we know the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for human connection, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, the sites and forums that shaped them, and what reclaiming the internet really looks like.

This month, we’re catching up with Tawanda Kanhema, a journalist and product leader who’s worked across African newsrooms and driven innovation in Silicon Valley. A former Mozillian, he’s currently a board member at the News Product Alliance, where he’s helping empower newsrooms to thrive online. Ahead of the NPA Summit 2024: Tech & Trust, we chatted with Tawanda about his favorite internet rabbit holes (spoiler: creative coding!) and the importance of building strong online communities.

What is your favorite corner of the internet? 

The News Product Alliance. It’s a community of product thinkers focused on shaping the future of news. We explore ways to empower newsrooms to strengthen relationships with their communities and design products that enhance how they reach audiences. There are many small newsrooms with limited resources coming up with innovative ways to use available technologies to expand their reach, strengthen their credibility and establish scalable business models.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

For the last 10 years, I’ve visited a site called Codrops once a week. It’s a community of animation designers and front-end developers sharing demos for others to remix or build on. It’s a great source of inspiration for me, especially when working on digital storytelling. Another site I love is threejs.org, a JavaScript library and application programming interface for creating 3D graphics. NASA even used it for their Mars landing simulation!

What is the one tab you always regret closing?

Honestly, I don’t really regret closing tabs — I use Pocket for everything. All my favorite resources from Codrops and three.js live there, so I can revisit them anytime.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?

I’ve been obsessed with three.js and how it lets you create photorealistic animations with JavaScript and WebGL. For a while, I thought it might even replace some video production workflows, but video still leads in visual communication. Another tool I can’t stop talking about is A-Frame, a web framework that allows you to build 3D virtual worlds in the browser.

What was the first online community you engaged with?

I was part of Google’s Earth Outreach program, focused on how geospatial tools can be used to effect change, and enhance the representation of communities on maps. That led me to mapping projects in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Northern Ontario. It sparked my passion for mapping and documenting underrepresented places.

If you could create your own corner of the internet, what would it look like?

I’ve actually started creating it with Unmapped Planet. It’s an interactive archive of my photography from mapping projects. The site allows users to experience virtual reality tours of the places I’ve mapped. My goal is to create a visual archive and eventually make it more community-focused.

What articles and/or videos are you waiting to read/watch right now?

I have a ton saved in Pocket, mostly around imaging technologies in the generative AI space. I recently completed a Stanford AI course, so I’m diving into articles on how AI is being ethically used in newsrooms. One example is The Baltimore Times’ initiative, led by Paris Brown, to use generative AI create audio versions of the publication’s text stories. This project has expanded access and made The Baltimore Times’ content more accessible to the the community.

With the News Product Alliance creating space for news product builders to connect, how do you think nurturing a community like this can help shape the future of the internet?

We design online experiences that create support networks and connect product thinkers worldwide.  And thanks to the power of the community, we are building programs that establish a cycle of support, like our Mentor Network (through which a few other mentors and myself are mentoring current and aspiring newsroom product managers). 

The internet has been shaped by the interests of private companies and governments over the last 15 to 20 years, with civic institutions and technology organizations playing the lead role in establishing standards, and communities mostly left out. If we want to change that, we need more diverse communities and change agents ensuring that online content is credible and representative of diverse voices. NPA’s network of over 3,000 professionals is one such community, offering skills development, inspiration and examples of how newsrooms are solving similar problems. For example, we launched a News Product Management Certification program to help people learn product management and apply it in their newsrooms. We’re helping bridge the gap between data-driven decision-making and traditional editorial judgment.

Tawanda Kanhema is a journalist and product manager with a background in reporting across Africa and leading product strategy in Silicon Valley. He previously worked at Mozilla on Pocket and Firefox, connecting millions of users to high-quality content. As a board member of the News Product Alliance, Tawanda focuses on fostering innovation and community among news product builders, helping newsrooms adapt and thrive in the digital age. 

Get Firefox

Get the browser that protects what’s important

The post A journalist-turned-product leader on reshaping the internet through community appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

In the world of entrepreneurship, one business owner’s journey proves the power of simple technology.

And group chats.

When Richelle Samy founded Culture of Stamina, a coaching service, she set out to create an online presence that was elegant and professional. She found what she was looking for when a group chat led her to Solo, Mozilla’s AI website creator for solopreneurs. After a few clicks using Solo’s generative AI (GenAI) tools, Richelle had a website for her brand with bold, sharp text and colors that perfectly captured her vision.

For Richelle, Solo enables her to focus more on empowering and training her clients instead of spending hours on her website. Other website builders weren’t as easy.

“Those tools are really nice, but I feel like you need a little bit of knowledge of what you want to do and how you want to put things together,” she recalled. “Whereas with Solo, I knew I was looking for a window for my business for people to contact me, and I only wanted a couple of pages. It was very easy to use something that was already pre-made, versus something I had to do from scratch.”

When Mozilla launched Solo in December, we were curious to see how people like Richelle would receive GenAI with website creation. Six months into this journey, we’re happy with the progress, and it’s time to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and learned along the way. We talked with the head of Solo at Mozilla, Raj Singh, about the AI website creator, its journey since the early stages, how it’s disrupting itself in the $2.1 billion website builder software industry with free custom domains and much more. Below is a snippet of our conversation. For the entire interview, follow along at our Innovations Projects blog.

To start, let’s talk about the first few months of Solo since its Beta launch in December. How big is the team, and how many websites have been published?

Solo started in May of last year with just myself and a part-time designer. We built a lightweight, clickable prototype and technical implementation to test whether generative AI could really work for website authoring. We also spent significant time surveying the broader landscape to make sure we had something that could differentiate and compete in an entrenched market.

After initial validation, we added one engineer and started the development process in June. By September, we had our first iteration that could create a website for a solopreneur with just a few simple inputs, and from there, we continued to refine the user experience. In October, we released an internal beta, and then in December, we launched our beta publicly.

Since then, our team within the Mozilla Innovation Projects group grew during this journey from just an engineer, a part-time designer and me, to three engineers, a part-time designer, myself and other part-time resources to support us.

We launched Solo 1.0 this past month, and in that period since beta, we’ve seen over 7,000 published websites across industries, from pool cleaners, to coaches, to immigration consultants.

When we started, our goal was to make it simple for non-technical solopreneurs to build their web presence and grow their business, and we believe we have accomplished the first step.

How do you compete with Solo in such a crowded market? How are you making Solo free?

When we initially conceptualized Solo, marrying GenAI with the service provider segment was an insertion point. Since then, and as expected, the incumbents have also built GenAI capabilities and improved their user experiences for the service provider audience.

In this situation, where we are the underdog, my approach is to look for maximum disruption, and we landed at the business model. Every competitor — that we are aware of, at least — charges for connecting and hosting your custom domain. This makes sense – 20 years ago, bandwidth wasn’t cheap and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates that enable an encrypted web connection cost money. Today, the former is near zero and the latter is zero.

We asked, “What if we just made this free?” This would be very disruptive, so this is exactly what we are doing. Not only is it disruptive, but democratizing the category is also in line with our mission to increase access to the web. We are making web hosting and connecting your custom domain free, similar to how Robinhood disrupted brokerages by eliminating trading fees. Many do not launch their website because they can’t afford or don’t yet have enough business to justify the cost. It also doesn’t help that many of these incumbents rely on hidden upsells and next thing you know, you’re spending $100 a month for your dog walking service. In this way, Mozilla continues to be a global public resource looking out for the interests of people.

How is it building Solo, a new product at Mozilla?

Building a new product at Mozilla, also known as zero to one, and probably any large organization, has challenges. I come from a startup background, so this is my comfort zone and I have some principles I generally abide by.

First, it’s important to be the top advocate for the product. This can be hard because things will pull you in different directions, whether other initiatives, shiny objects or your own self-doubt. Second, adopt the tools you need and optimize on speed — it’s easy to get stuck in administrative stuff. Third, resourcing can be slow, so optimize on generalists and make sure everyone is comfortable with grunt work. Fourth, make product decisions — many of them one-way — quickly. There’s just not enough time to get consensus or have everything be data-driven at the onset. The last thing is to take agency when you can. The five minutes here, the half day there, the follow-up meeting tomorrow cause delays and they compound.

Can you share details about how Solo fits into Mozilla’s overall mission?

In many ways, Mozilla has been at the intersection of the internet and the interests of the people, as opposed to big tech. With Solo, we are squarely within this vision. We are democratizing access to the web for solopreneurs, and we’re increasing equity by helping those that can’t afford to host their websites in emerging markets, or where English isn’t their first language, with writing, designing and curating their content.

For the entire interview, follow along at our Innovations Projects blog.

Ready to start creating?

Launch your website

The post How Mozilla’s AI website creator, Solo, is shaking up a $2.1B industry appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

While the creative growth of AI occurring so rapidly is a fascinating development for our society, it’s important to remember its harms that cannot be ignored, especially pertaining to racial bias and discrimination against African-Americans.

In recent years, there has been research revealing that AI technologies have struggled to identify images and speech patterns of nonwhite people. Black AI researchers at tech giants creating AI technology have raised concerns about its harms against the Black community. 

The concerns surrounding AI’s racial biases and harms against Black people are serious and should be a big focus as 2024 gets underway. We invited University of Michigan professor, Harvard Faculty Associate and former Mozilla Foundation Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI, Apryl Williams, to dive into this topic further. Williams studies experiences of gender and race at the intersection of digital spaces and algorithmic technocultures, and her most recent book, “Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating,” exposes how race-based discrimination is a fundamental part of the most popular and influential dating algorithms.

To start, as a professor, I’m curious to know: How aware do you think students are of the dangers of the technology they’re using? Beyond the simple things like screen time notifications they might get, and more about AI problems, misinformation, etc.?

They don’t know. I show two key documentaries in my classes every semester. I teach a class called “Critical Perspectives on the Internet.” And then I have another class that’s called “Critical AI” and in both of those classes, the students are always shook. They always tell me, “You ruin everything for me, I can never look at the world the same,” which is great. That’s my goal. I hope that they don’t look at the world the same when they leave my classes, of course. But I show them  “Coded Bias” by Shalini Kantayya and when they watched that just this past semester they were like, “I can’t believe this is legal, like, how are they using facial recognition everywhere? How are they able to do these things on our phones? How do they do this? How do they do that? I can’t believe this is legal. And why don’t people talk about it?” And I’m like, “Well, people do talk about it. You guys just aren’t necessarily keyed into the places where people are talking about.” And I think that’s one of the feelings of sort of like these movements that we’re trying to build is that we’re not necessarily tapped into the kinds of places young people go to get information.

We often assume that AI machines are neutral in terms of race, but research has shown that some of them are not and can have biases against Black people. When we think about where this problem stems from, is it fair to say it begins with the tech industry’s lack of representation of people who understand and can work to address the potential harms of these technologies?

I would say, yes, that is a huge part of it. But the actual starting point is the norms of the tech industry. So we know that the tech industry was created by and large by the military, industrial, complex  — like the internet was a military device. And so because of that, a lot of the inequity or like inequality, social injustice of the time that the internet work was created were baked into the structure of the internet. And then, of course, industries that spring up from the internet, right? We know that the military was using the internet for surveillance. And look now, we have in 2024, widespread surveillance of Black communities, of marginalized communities, of undocumented communities, right? So really, it’s the infrastructure of the internet that was built to support white supremacy, I would say, is the starting point. And because the infrastructure of the internet and of the tech industry was born from white supremacy, then, yes, we have these hiring practices, and not just the hiring practices, but hiring practices where, largely, they are just hiring the same kinds of people — Cisgender, hetero white men. Increasingly white women, but still we’re not seeing the kinds of diversity that we should be seeing if we’re going to reach demographic parity. So we have the hiring. But then also, we have just the norms of the tech industry itself that are really built to service, I would say, the status quo, they’re not built to disrupt. They’re built to continue the norm. And if people don’t stop and think about that, then, yeah, we’re going to see the replication of all this bias because U.S.  society was built on bias, right? Like it is a stratified society inherently. And because of that,  we’re always going to see that stratification in the tech industry as well.

Issues of bias in AI tend to impact the people who are rarely in positions to develop the technology. How do you think we can enable AI communities to engage in the development and governance of AI to get it where it’s working toward creating systems that embrace the full spectrum of inclusion?

Yes, we should enable it. But also the tech industry, like people in these companies, need to sort of take the onus on themselves to reach out to communities in which they are going to deploy their technology, right? So if your target audience, let’s say on TikTok, is Black content creators, you need to be reaching out to Black content creators and Black communities before you launch an algorithm that targets those people. You should be having them at your headquarters. You should be doing listening sessions. You should be elevating Black voices. You should be listening to people, right? Listening to the concerns, having support teams in place, before you launch the technology, right? So instead of retroactively trying to Band-aid it when you have an oops or like a bad PR moment, you should be looking to marginalize communities as experts on what they need and how they see technology being implemented in their lives.

A lot of the issues with these technologies in relation to Black people is that they are not designed for Black people — and even the people they are designed for run into problems. It feels like this is a difficult spot for everyone involved?

Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I feel like it’s really hard for good people on the inside of tech companies to actually say, “Hey, this thing that we’re building might be generating money, but it’s not generating long-term longevity,” right? Or health for our users. And I get that — not every tech company is health oriented. They may act like they are, but they’re not, like to a lot of them, money is their bottom line. I really think it’s up to sort of like movement builders and tech industry shakers to say or to be able to create buy-in for programs, algorithms, ideas, that foster equity. But we have to be able to create buy-in for that. So that might look like, “Hey, maybe we might lose some users on this front end when we implement this new idea, but we’re going to gain a whole lot more users.” Folks of color, marginalized users, queer users, trans users, if they feel like they can trust us, and that’s worth the investment, right? So it’s really just valuing the whole person, rather than just sort of valuing the face value of the money only or what they think it is, but looking to see the potential of what would happen if people felt like their technology was actually trustworthy.

AI is rapidly growing. What are things we can add to it as it evolves, and what are things we should work to eliminate? 

I would say we need to expand our definition of safety. I think that safety should fundamentally include your mental health and well-being, and if the company that you’re using it for to find intimacy or to connect with friends is not actually keeping you safe as a person of color, as a trans person, as a queer person, then you can’t really have like full mental wellness if you are constantly on high alert, you’re constantly in this anxious position, you’re having to worry that your technology is exploiting you, right? So, if we’re going to have all of this buzz that I’m seeing about trust and safety, that can’t just stop at the current discourse that we’re having on trust and safety. It can’t just be about protecting privacy, protecting data, protecting white people’s privacy. That has to include reporting mechanisms for users of color when they encounter abuse. Whether that is racism or homophobia, right? Like it needs to be more inclusive. I would say that the way that we think about trust and safety and automated or  algorithmic systems needs to be more inclusive. We really need to widen the definition of safety. And probably the definition of trust also. 

In terms of subtracting, they’re just a lot of things that we shouldn’t be doing, that we’re currently doing. Honestly, the thing that we need to subtract the most is this idea that we move fast and break things in tech culture. It’s sort of like, we are just moving for the sake of innovation. We might really need to dial back on this idea of moving for the sake of innovation, and actually think about moving towards a safer  humanity for everybody, and designing with that goal in mind. We can innovate in a safe way. We might have to sacrifice speed, a nd I think we need to say, it’s okay to sacrifice speed in some cases.

When I started to think about the dangers of AI, I immediately remembered the situation with Robert Williams a few years ago, when he was wrongly accused by police that used AI facial recognition. There is more to it than just the strange memes and voice videos people create. What are the serious real world harms that you think of when it comes to Black people and AI that people are overlooking?

I don’t know that it’s overlooked, but I don’t think that Black people are aware of the amount of surveillance of everyday technologies. When you go to the airport, even if you’re not using Clear or other facial recognition technology at the airport for expedited security, they’re still using facial recognition technology. When you’re crossing borders, when you are even flying domestically, they’re still using that tech to look at your face. You look into the camera, they take your picture. They compare it to your ID. Like, that is facial recognition technology. I understand that that is for our national safety, but that also means that they’re collecting a lot of data on us. We don’t know what happens with that data. We don’t know if they keep it for 24 hours or if they keep it for 24 years. Are they keeping logs of what your face looks like every time you go? In 50 years, are we going to see a system that’s like “We’ve got these TSA files, and we’re able to track your aging from the time that you were 18 to the time that you’re 50, just based on your TSA data,” right? Like, we really don’t know what’s happening with the data. And that’s just one example. 

We have constant surveillance, especially in our cars. The smarter our cars get, the more they’re surveilling us. We are seeing increasing use of those systems and cars being used, and police cases to see if you were paying attention. Were you talking on your phone? Were you texting and driving? Things like that. There is automation in cars that’s designed to identify people and to stop right to avoid hitting you. And as we know, a lot of the systems misidentify Black people as trash cans, and will instead hit them. There are so many instances where AI is part of our life, and I don’t think people realize the depth of which it really does drive our lives. And I think that’s the thing that scares me the most for people of color is that we don’t understand just how much AI is part of our everyday life. And I wish people would stop and sort of think about, yes, I get easy access to this thing, but what am I trading off to get that easy access? What does that mean for me? And what does that mean for my community? We have places like Project Blue light, Project Green Light, where those systems are heavily surveilled in order to “protect communities.” But are those created to protect white communities at the expense of Black and brown communities? Right? That’s what we have to think about when we say that these technologies, especially surveillance technologies, are being used to protect people, who are they protecting? And who are they protecting people from? And is that idea that they’re protecting people from a certain group of people realistic? Or is that grounded in some cultural bias that we have. 

Looking bigger picture this year: It’s an election year and AI will certainly be a large talking point for candidates. Regardless of who wins this fall, in what ways do you think the administration can ensure that policies and enforcement are instilled to address AI to make sure that racial and other inequities don’t continue and evolve?

They need to enforce or encourage that tech companies have the onus of transparency on them. There needs to be some kind of legislative prompting, there has to be some kind of responsibility where tech companies actually suffer consequences, legal consequences, economic consequences, when they violate trust with the public, when they extract data without telling people. There also needs to be more two-way conversations. Often tech companies will just tell you, “These are the terms of service, you have to agree with them,” and if you don’t, you opt-out, that means you can’t use the tech. There needs to be some kind of system where tech companies can say, “Okay, we’re thinking about rolling this out or updating our terms of service in this way, how does the community feel about that?” And a way that really they can be accountable to their users. I think we really just need some legislation that makes tech companies sort of put their feet to the fire in terms of them actually having responsibility to their users.

When it comes to fighting against racial biases and struggles, sometimes the most important people that can help create change and bring awareness are those not directly impacted by what’s going on — for example, a white person being an ally and protesting for a Black person. What do you think most normal people can do to influence change and bring awareness to AI challenges for Black people?

I would say, for those people who are in the know about what tech companies are doing, talk about that with your kids, right? When you’re sitting down and your kids are telling you about something that their friend posted, that’s a perfect time to be like, “Let’s talk about that technology that your friend is using or that you’re using.” Did you know that on TikTok, this happens? Did you know that on TikTok, often Black creator voices are hidden, or Black content creators are shadow-banned? Did you know what happens on Instagram? These kinds of regular conversations, that way, these kinds of tech injustices are part of the everyday vernacular for kids as they’re coming up so that they can be more aware, and also so that they can advocate for themselves and for their communities.

Get Firefox

Get the browser that protects what’s important

The post How AI is unfairly targeting and discriminating against Black people appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

At Mozilla, we know we can’t create a better future alone, that is why each year we will be highlighting the work of 25 digital leaders using technology to amplify voices, effect change, and build new technologies globally through our Rise 25 Awards. These storytellers, innovators, activists, advocates. builders and artists are helping make the internet more diverse, ethical, responsible and inclusive.

This week, we chatted with winner Dr. J. Nathan Matias, a professor at Cornell University leading technology research to create change and impact digital rights. He leads the school’s Citizen and Technology Lab (CAT) and is the co-founder of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, a nonprofit defending the right to ethically study the impact of tech on society. We talk with Matias about his start in citizen science, his work advocating for researchers’ rights and more.

As a professor at Cornell, how would you gauge where students and Gen Z are at in terms of knowing the dangers of the internet?

As a researcher, I am very aware that my students are one narrow slice of Americans. I teach communication and technology. I teach this 500 student class and I think the students I teach hear about people’s concerns, about technology, through media, through what they see online. And they’re really curious about what if that is true and what we can do about it. That’s one of the great joys of being a professor, that I can introduce students to what we know, thanks to research and to all the advocacy and journalism, and also to what we don’t know and encourage students to help create the answers for themselves, their communities and future generations.

To kind of go a little bit even further, as a professor, what are the things that you try to instill with them, or what are core concepts that you think are really important for them to know and try to hammer down to them about the internet and the social impacts of all of these platforms?

If I’m known for one thing, it’s the idea that knowledge and power about digital technologies shouldn’t be constrained to just within the walls of the universities and tech companies. Throughout my classes and throughout my work, I actively collaborate with and engage with the general public to understand what people’s fears are to collect evidence and to inform accountability. And so, my students had the opportunity to see how that works and participate in it themselves. And I think that’s especially important, because yeah, people come to a university to learn and grow and learn from what scholars have said before, but also, if we come out of our degrees without an appreciation for the deeply held knowledge that people have outside of universities, I think that’s a missed opportunity. 

Beyond the data you collect in your field, what other types of data collection out there creates change and inspires you to continue the work that you do?

I’m often inspired by people who do environmental citizen science because many of them live in context. We all live in contexts where our lives and our health and our futures are shaped by systems and infrastructures that are invisible, and that we might not appear to have much power over, right? It could be air or water, or any number of other environmental issues. And it’s similar for our digital environments. I’m often inspired by people who do work for data collection and advocacy and science on the environment when thinking about what we could do for our digital worlds. Last summer, I spent a week with a friend traveling throughout the California Central Valley, talking to educators, activists, organizers and farmworkers and communities working to understand and use data to improve their physical environment. We spent a day with Cesar Aguirre at the Central California Justice Network. You have neighborhoods in central California that are surrounded by oil wells and people are affected by the pollution that comes out of those wells — some of them have long been abandoned and are just leaking. And it’s hard to convince people sometimes that you’re experiencing a problem and to document the problem in a way that can get things to change. Cesar talked about ways that people used air sensors and told their stories and created media and worked in their local council and at a state level to document the health impacts of these oil wells and actually get laws changed at the state level to improve safety across the state. Whenever I encounter a story like that, whether it’s people in Central California or folks documenting oil spills in Louisiana or people just around the corner from Cornell — indigenous groups advocating for safe water and water rights in Onondaga Lake — I’m inspired by the work that people have to do and do to make their concerns and experiences legible to powerful institutions to create change. Sometimes it’s through the courts, sometimes it’s through basic science that finds new solutions. Sometimes it’s mutual aid, and often at the heart of these efforts, is some creative work to collect and share data that makes a difference.

When it pertains to citizen science and the work that you do, what do you think is the biggest challenge you and other researchers face? And by that I mean, is it kind of the inaction of tech companies and a lot of these institutions? Or is it maybe just the very cold online climate of the world today?

It’s always hard to point to one. I think the largest one is just that we have a lot more work to do to help people realize that they can participate in documenting problems and imagining solutions. We’re so used to the idea that tech companies will take care of things for us, that when things go wrong, we might complain, but we don’t necessarily know how to organize or what to do next. And I think there’s a lot that we as people who are involved in these issues and more involved in them can do to make people aware and create pathways — and I know Mozilla has done a lot of work around awareness raising. Beyond that, we’ve kind of reached a point where I wish companies were indifferent, but the reality is that they’re actively working to hinder independent research and accountability. If you talk to anyone who’s behind the Coalition for Independent Tech Research, I think we would all say we kind of wish it we didn’t have to create it, because spending years building a network to support and defend researchers when they come under attack by governments or tech companies for accountability and transparency work for actually trying to solve problems, like, that’s not how you prefer to spend your time. But, I think that on the whole, the more people realize that we can do something, and that our perspective and experience matters, and that it can be part of the solution, the better off we are with our ability to document issues and imagine a better future. And as a result, when it involves organizing in the face of opposition, the more people we’ll have on that journey

Just looking at this year in general with so much going on, what do you think is the biggest challenge that we face this year and in the world? How do we combat it?

Here’s the one I’ve been thinking about. Wherever you live, we don’t live in a world where a person who has experienced a very real harm from a digital technology — whether it’s social media or some kind of AI system — can record that information and seek some kind of redress, or even know who to turn to, to address or fix the problem or harm. And we see this problem in so many levels, right? If someone’s worried about discrimination from an algorithm in hiring, who do you turn to? If you’re worried about the performance of your self-driving car, or you have a concern about mental health and social media this year? We haven’t had those cases in court yet. We’re seeing some efforts by governments to create standards and we’re seeing new laws proposed. But it’s still not possible, right? If you get a jar of food from the supermarket that has harmful bacteria, we kind of know what to do. There’s a way you can report it, and that problem can be solved for lots of people. But that doesn’t yet exist in these spaces. My hope for 2024 is that on whatever issue people are worried about or focused on, we’ll be able to make some progress towards knowing how to create those pathways. Whether it’s going to be work so that courts know how to make sense of evidence about digital technologies —and I think they’re going to be some big debates there — whether it’s going to involve these standards conversations that are happening in Europe and the U.S., around how to report AI incidents and how to determine whether an AI system is safe or not, or safe for certain purposes and any number of other issues. Will that happen and be solved this year? No, it’s a longer term effort. But how could we possibly say that we have a tech ecosystem that respects people’s rights and treats them well and is safe if we don’t even have basic ways for people to be heard when things go wrong, whether it’s by courts or companies, or elsewhere. And so I think that’s the big question that I’m thinking about both in our citizen science work and our broader policy work at Cat Lab.

There’s also a bigger problem that so many of these apps and platforms are very much dependent upon us having to doing something compared to them. 

Absolutely. I think a lot of people have lost trust in companies to do things about those reports. Because companies have a history of ignoring them. In fact, my very first community participatory science project in this space, which started back in 2014, we pulled information from hundreds of women who faced online harassment. And we looked at the kinds of things they experienced. And then whether Twitter back then was responding to people’s reports. It revealed a bunch of systemic problems and how the company has handled it. I think we’ve reached the point where there’s some value in that reporting, and sometimes for good and sometimes those things are exploited for censorship purposes as well — people report things they disagree with to try to get it taken down. But even more deeply, those reports don’t get at the deeper systemic issues. They don’t address how to prevent problems in the first place, or how to create or how to change the underlying logics of those platforms, or how to incentivize companies differently, so that they don’t create the conditions for those problems in the first place. I think we’re all looking for what are the right entities? Some currently exist, some we’re going to have to create that will be able to take on what people experience and actually create change that matters.

We started Rise25 to celebrate Mozilla’s 25th anniversary, what do you hope people are celebrating in the next 25 years?

I love that question because my first true encounter with Mozilla would have been in 2012 at the Mozilla festival, and I was so inspired to be surrounded by a room of people who cared about making the Internet and our digital worlds better for people. And it was such a powerful statement that Mozilla convened people. Other tech institutions have these big events where the CEO stands on a stage and tells everyone why what they’re doing is revolutionary. And Mozilla did something radically different, which was to create a community and a space for people to envision the future together. I don’t know what the tech innovations or questions are going to be 25 years from now — there will probably be some enduring ones about access and equity and inclusion and safety for whatever the technologies are. My hope is that 25 years from now, Mozilla will continue to be an organization and a movement that listens and amplifies and supports a broad and diverse community to envision that together. It’s one of the things that makes Mozilla so special, and I think is one of the things that makes it so powerful.

What is one action you think that everybody can take to make the world and their lives online better?

I think the action to believe yourself when you notice something unusual, or have a question. And then to find other people who can corroborate and build a collective picture. Whether it’s by participating in the study at Cat Lab or something else. I have a respiratory disability, and it’s so easy to doubt your own experience and so hard to convince other people sometimes that what you’re experiencing is real. And so I think the biggest step we can do is to believe ourselves and to like, believe others when they talk about things they’ve experienced and are worried about but use that experience as the beginning of something larger, because it can be so powerful, and make such a huge difference when people believe in each other and take each other seriously.

What gives you hope about the future of our world?

So many things. I think every time I meet someone who is making things work under whatever circumstances they have — unsurprising as someone who does citizen and community science. I think about our conversations with Jasmine Walker, who is a community organizer who organizes these large spaces for Black communities online and has been doing it for ages and across many versions of technology and eras of time. And just to see the care and commitment that people have to their communities and families as it relates to technology — it could be our collaborators who are investigating hiring algorithms or communities we’ve talked to. We did a study that involved understanding the impact of smartphone design on people’s time use, and we met a bunch of people who are colorblind and advocates for accessibility. In each of those cases, there are people who care deeply about those around them and so much that they’re willing to do science to make a difference. I’m always inspired when we talk, and we find ways to support the work that they’re doing by creating evidence together that could make a difference. As scientists and researchers, we are sometimes along for the ride for just part of the journey. And so I’m always inspired when I see the commitment and dedication people have for a better world.

Get Firefox

Get the browser that protects what’s important

The post Dr. J. Nathan Matias on leading technology research for better digital rights appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

At Mozilla, we know  we can’t create a better future alone, that is why each year we will be highlighting the work of 25 digital leaders using technology to amplify voices, effect change, and build new technologies globally through our Rise 25 Awards. These storytellers, innovators, activists, advocates. builders and artists are helping make the internet more diverse, ethical, responsible and inclusive.

This week, we chatted with Nyamekye Wilson, a creator that is the founder and CEO of Black Sisters in STEM, a group building one of the largest talent pipelines of Black college women in STEM. Her passion for global STEM and bridging the gender gap gave birth to a six-figure tech company while she was working at Google. We talk with Nyamekye about the challenges she’s faced in her career, starting a Black nonprofit, where she draws inspiration from and more.

OK, first off, where did the phrase “the Moses of STEM” originate from for you?

It came to me at church, and it was something that I just knew and I just heard and my brain is like “the Moses of them.” And then it was something that I spoke over to the team like a fellow — like that is really perfect, that’s exactly who you are. 

The historical figure of Moses, he was someone who led people out of activity. And so really with Black Sisters in STEM, it’s not just a workplace organization, it’s so much more than that. It is really that we are taking Black women out of a lot of the activity that they’ve learned over time from a very young age of things that we cannot be, things that we cannot do, places we cannot go. Who we cannot be. And so, when it comes to the Moses of STEM, it’s really about unearthing and bringing people out of a lot of bondage and most of that bondage is always in the mind. 

You mentioned a lot of the different experiences and labels you’ve dealt with in your career — racism, sexism, classism — that we face in schooling and in the workforce in general. Which issue would you say was the one that really ignited the fire for you and the work that you do right now the most?

I would say it was really the concept of intersectionality. When I did leave my finance major in college, I went into sociology and women, gender and sexuality studies, that’s when I got introduced to Kimberlé Crenshaw and her concept of intersectionality. And that was the first time in life that I actually heard a philosophy that actually spoke to my experience. 

What are the biggest challenges that you’ve had to face starting a Black nonprofit that most people might not be aware of?

We are not the ones in the world of philanthropy, typically, when it comes to running systems and running things at a large level. Even when you look at places like Africa or places like the Caribbean, or even Black American communities in the U.S., a lot of organizations aren’t run by us, aren’t founded by us in our community to support us. So that’s one thing, the funding structure and really understanding that some of the relationships are doing a lot of funding with the people that are running them. 

Number two is that it can be very difficult to fight for something that you also share the identity of. This is something that we notice in the civil rights movement — it’s a lot of fatigue to fight for the rights of your people when you are also the people that are inclusive of those fights, right? It’s a constant mental war, I would say, because it’s like, I’m not just talking about Black women from afar, I am the Black woman who’s been through that. I am the Black woman who did not have the support. I am the Black woman who, you know, went through the question and anxiety trying to get to the place where I’m trying to get to my girl’s to. I am the Black woman who gained over 60 pounds trying to take my family out of poverty and be the first person in my family to have a six-figure career right out of college. That is a mental battle that you constantly have to do. And so you really have to have a lot of mental attitude. You really have to work with the best interactions and best relationships that maybe other populations more likely have — they don’t have to do half the work because if they came from a very wealthy area, they’re likely to have that and some people in those areas have a foundation, it’s very likely. And they likely have those people to be family friends or family connections — it makes it so much easier when you can just go to their house, or you can just call them and say, “hey, I have this idea.” That’s how money moves by relationship. Essentially, it always moves by relationship because money is a trust factor. And when you have the relationship, someone who has known you since you were five, and they’ve been friends with your mom and dad for 20 years, that trust factor is already there. Versus, a young Black girl coming to the phone with her story and her narrative and you’ve never met her in your life. You don’t know anything about her. You don’t know anything about the organization. Now, I have to do 10 times the work. And plead to you who I am, plead to you what we’re doing at Black Sisters to get that trust, compared to someone with less information because that’s someone who you’ve known your whole life. And that’s just human nature. But that human nature is now, again, back to the systems of racism. That effect of racism is now causing more work for me.

Where do you draw inspiration from in continuing the work that you do today? 

I would say what inspired me really is my faith. I’m a very faith-based person, very spiritual person, and my faith in Christ is what keeps me going. Because if not, it would be very hard to do this work. Number two of what keeps me going is knowing that where I come from had even less access, even less opportunity and seeing what they were able to create and what they were able to be so inspiring. 

I’ve always loved learning about civilized movements, learning about things that MLK was a part of. All of these people — Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, — when you read and watch, we just learn about the level of resilience and the level of fortitude and the level to feel and see a better world completely at the expense of themselves. As much as there is a need for a better world, the world I’m seeing is way better than the world they had. And if they could affect that global change, I can, too. 

And then I would also say, in alignment with that, my own mother. She is a perfect example. Single mother. She really held the weight of my entire family on her shoulders. And she never gave up. One of the most consistent, one of the most brilliant, one of the most hardworking — if not the most hardworking — brilliant person I know. Through all that she’s given, that I already have, it inspires me to do more.

What is one action that everybody can take to make our world a little bit better?

I would say take the time to learn. After going through sociology, women, gender and sexuality studies, I just realized that was a wealth of knowledge that everyone in this world should have. Unfortunately, that’s not how most of the education systems are. … Being a viable part of the society, it is really important to understand what has to be reading and what has to do with where the society is right now. I don’t think a lot of people do enough research.

 And then, number two, after you do that research, have some sort of goals around supporting people who are putting their efforts in changing that society and changing that world. And be very intentional about it. Look at who is running those companies. Look at the impact of their companies. Look at who they’re supporting — and everyone at every level. 

Whether you give your time, whether you give your money, whether you give whatever, I don’t think there’s ever enough people to give. You can even give your amplification, right? Amplifying something on social media. Amplifying and making sure you forward a newsletter. Making sure you promise on something. You don’t understand what that could potentially do, especially if you have a certain network. You have a certain network and if you’re on LinkedIn and you have the time to comment on a Black Sisters post, you are doing a lot for us. Because now your entire network is going to be seeing that consistently. And that is something that’s completely free and didn’t take many minutes to do. 

And then also, if you have the capacity, make sure you’re also giving on a yearly basis as much as you can budget for. 

We started Rise 25 to celebrate Mozilla’s 25th anniversary. What do you hope that people are celebrating in the next 25 years?

I hope people are celebrating a society that provides opportunities based off of potential and not race, color, gender, etc. I hope that potential means opportunities and that people are celebrating the fact that they are in a city, space, etc. that allows for potential and opportunities to always be on equal footing. And not be based off of things that you cannot control. 

What gives you hope for the future of our world?

What gives me hope is hope (laughs). What gives me hope is the ability to know that human beings have and will always have the luxury of bringing stories of seeing things progress, of moving and changing the world. And it’s going to be something that has been done throughout. So many people have different stories. It’s everything. And so, I really believe that if there’s a force that keeps me going, I think it’s a way that people can hold onto that.

Device-level encryption from a name you can trust

Try Mozilla VPN

The post Creator Nyamekye Wilson is uplifting Black women in STEM and creating a talent pipeline for the next generation appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

At Mozilla, we know  we can’t create a better future alone, that is why each year we will be highlighting the work of 25 digital leaders using technology to amplify voices, effect change, and build new technologies globally through our Rise 25 Awards. These storytellers, innovators, activists, advocates. builders and artists are helping make the internet more diverse, ethical, responsible and inclusive.

This week, we chatted with winner Chris Smalls, an activist using technology to effect change and advocate for a better world. He’s the founder and president of the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island that advocates for workers’ rights and conditions. In 2020, he was fired by Amazon after leading protests against its working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We talk with Smalls about the early days of the union fight, his work in the community and how the digital world has impacted organizing efforts.

When people are fighting against Amazon, there are a lot of different fights — wages, time-off, to even remote work now. What was the main thing that you wanted to fight for like during that time? When you began to fight for the union.

The pandemic, for sure. It was COVID-19. That initially was the reason why I spoke up. You know, after working there for a number of years — five years — and realizing that we weren’t prepared for the virus on a local level, it was a very alarming situation to be in, and this was before the vaccine, before mask testing, before we even really understood what the virus was doing. We knew it was wiping people out, so my fear was that it would spread like wildfire within the warehouse and within the whole Amazon network. So initially, I was just trying to go through the proper channels. And one thing led to another, you know, when I wasn’t met with an answer that I felt was sustainable for not just myself, but for everybody, that’s when I started to pretty much rebel. I try to still do that in a respectable manner, but unfortunately, the company decided to take an aggressive route by just quarantining myself out of the thousands of people, and I felt that wasn’t right at all. So initially it was over COVID-19, but as things unfolded, the demands changed over time. And it wasn’t until 2021 — the end of 2021, spring — was when we decided that we were going to form this independent Amazon labor union.

How did you get people on board with this? How did you convince people to buy into it?

I used Amazon’s principles — really, to be honest with you — earning the trust, building the relationships. One of my favorite principles out of the 14 was, have backbone, disagree and commit, so that’s exactly what I did. I disagreed with the way they were responding. I had a backbone to stand up to it, and I committed myself to the movement and committed myself to building relationships and earning the trust of the workers. So, over the course of 11 months, you know, organizing outside across the street, meeting people, having conversations, having barbecues, giving out free food — and yes, we did give out free weed — we did all these things, little things that mattered the most. Things that Amazon overlooked all the time – the little things. How do people get to work? How do they eat lunch every day? How do they get a ride to and from work in a snowstorm? We were there for them during those times, and we did those little bit of things with a little bit of money that we had from donations, and that’s ultimately how we defeated them, which is bringing people together from all different backgrounds.

When you reflect on your time at Amazon, what do you remember most about that period in your life in terms of the work that you did there?

What I remember most is really just being allowed to be exactly who people see today. When I worked there, I was so well respected because I was a good employee, that I was allowed to pretty much create my culture within my own little department no matter what building I was in. I opened up 3 buildings for Amazon — one in New Jersey, Connecticut and Staten Island — and for me to go to each of these buildings and be able to have the respect of upper management and have the morale of the people underneath me to make them productive, and my team go number one in our department. I think people respected the fact that I was always siding with the workers, no matter what position I was in, and I was a supervisor. To have the morale that I had, I had to understand where people came from, and I understood where they came from because I was them at one point in time. I was an entry level worker on the line, picking and packing boxes just like the rest of them. So for me, I never forgot where I came from, and by having those types of skill sets, along with learning those principles, that’s what made me the best organizer I can possibly be.

You’ve gotten a lot of different spotlights — being on The Daily Show, meeting President Joe Biden, magazine features —  which experience from the last few years has kind of made you stop and realize the magnitude of what you did?

The Daily Show is definitely up there, that was a cool one. The Breakfast Club, that was a cool one for me. Desus and Mero was a cool one for me. And of course, the White House. I’m not fond of the President, but to go to the White House as a young black man from where I came from is unheard of, so, that’s always going to be a highlight of my life, regardless of who the President is. 

Where do you draw inspiration from to continue the work that you do today?

I draw definitely from the youth, the younger generation. I try to stay young and hip — I’m still 35 years old and I have kids already, I have kids about to be in high school. My kids are 11 going on 12, and they’re watching me on YouTube, especially on TikTok. I’m in their classroom. They’re talking to their friends about their dad. So for me, my inspiration is being a good role model, being a good father and understanding that the youth is paying attention now, and because of my uniqueness and our style, our swag, the way my union is so different, I want to continue to build off of that. I want to make sure that we’re making unionizing cool because before it was boring, you know, to talk about it. But now we’re trying to change the culture of what labor looks like.

What do you think is the biggest challenge that we face right now in the world, on and offline? How do you think we combat it?

Well, the biggest challenge is the opposition. The system that’s been in place is still operating against us, and they got a lot more money and power than we do. The reason why they continue to get away with the things that they do is because we’re still divided. 

I’m a fast learner in my few years of organizing, the labor movement itself is in a small bubble. If you talk about social injustice, it’s in a small bubble. You talk about women’s rights, it’s in the small bubble. Climate is in a different bubble. We’re not really, truly connected until we see something like a George Floyd where everybody’s out in the streets, and that’s the problem with America. We all go out in the streets when we see things like George Floyd. But then, after a while, we forget about it, and then we go back to work. And then it’s like, “Oh well, I can’t, because of my own individual problems that I have, and it’s not everybody’s fault. It’s the system that we live in that is designed to keep us distracted and not together.” So I think that’s the biggest issue that we got to overcome is, how do we connect all these different movements? Because at the end of the day, we’re all a part of the working class, no matter what movement, we’re all part of the working class. And if you’re in the labor movement, everybody here is a worker, no matter what job you work for or what industry you work for, you’re a worker. My goal one day is to connect trade unions to all the different movements and make this a class struggle, This is a class struggle. It’s 99.9% of us versus the one percent class, the billionaires. And I think if we all realize — that we’re all poor compared to these billionaires that are the ones who make the decisions for the rest of us and control these corporations — then we’ll be way better off than we are as a country.

What gives you hope about the future of our world to reach a place where we’re all much better?

What gives me hope now is that I’m walking into middle schools now and these 10-year-olds are telling me that Jeff Bezos is a bad man. Back in the day I didn’t go to class, and on Career Day, there was no Chris Small walking into a classroom on Career Day. There was always police officers, firefighters or nurses and doctors. But there was never a young, Black, cool-looking, Urban-like, brother to come in and say “Yo, you could be a trade union leader and still be as cool as a rapper. It was none of that. So for me, that’s what gives me hope is that the young generation — it’s a gift and curse they have access to iPads because they get access to everything — but they’re much more conscious than we were. They’re much more smarter and advanced and I know that could be a little scary, because they do have access to a lot of things at a younger age, but these kids are so smart now that they’re able to make decisions at a younger age. The younger generation is paying attention to the major issues of the world right now. I think we’re in a time that we’ve never seen before and that’s what gives me hope is that the younger generation is going to lead the way instead of us passing the torch, they’re going to lead it.

Get Firefox

Get the browser that protects what’s important

The post Activist Chris Smalls reflects on taking on Amazon, forming worker unions and digital activism in 2024 appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

At Mozilla, we know  we can’t create a better future alone, that is why each year we will be highlighting the work of 25 digital leaders using technology to amplify voices, effect change, and build new technologies globally through our Rise 25 Awards. These storytellers, innovators, activists, advocates. builders and artists are helping make the internet more diverse, ethical, responsible and inclusive.

This week, we chatted with winner Trisha Prabhu, an award-winning innovator, social entrepreneur, technologist and advocate that has combatted cyberbullying and online hate since the age of 13 to make the internet a better place for everyone. We talk with her about the evolution of her app to stop online hate, ReThink, her growth as a professional through college at Oxford and Harvard, her biggest inspirations and how she views the future of the internet.

How has ReThink evolved its technology from the early days in 2013 to adapt to an online climate in 2024, where the internet has flooded with more hate speech and bullying?

I think ReThink has evolved in two key ways. So first, I’ll say one of our biggest advantages is that we are platform-agnostic. So, because the technology is a keyboard, and it works at the keyboard level, we’re able to work across any platform, whether it’s social media, to email and text. That ended up being really handy for us because when I developed and designed the technologies and keyboard way back in 2013, I had no idea that the internet was going to play the role that it does today in our lives a decade later. 

In terms of how things have changed and what we’ve had to kind of account for over the last decade, I think one big change has definitely been the type of cyberbullying that we see. When I first started this work, it was very text based — people using text to say mean things to each other. Certainly with the advent of AI (artificial intelligence) now in the last year, we’ve seen how image and video based harassment has become much more pervasive — people using memes, people using explicit images to bully, to harass, and to intimidate other people. One thing that we really had to adapt to and what we’re currently working on now is developing ReThink for detection of offensive images and videos, acknowledging that the way that people are harassing each other are changing. No doubt that work is going to continue. 

As we think about the metaverse, something that I’m really worried about is a world in which — and we’ve already had instances that this happened — users can be physically harassed right in the metaverse. It’s a completely different level of harm. As the harm itself evolves, we’ve been evolving. 

Another thing we’ve had to do is adapt the languages that we think are available and then the populations that it can serve. ReThink as it was developed 10 years ago was available in english. Today, on the Google Play Store, we’re available in nine languages. So, that’s been a huge evolution, to make the technology available for all those populations and think about the ways that cyberbullying is manifesting in these different contexts. 

What do you think is the biggest challenge we face online this year, and how do we combat that? 

I think the biggest issue that we face online this year would have to be the threat of AI to democracy and elections, just because there’s so much of the world that is voting in elections this year. Most recently, we had the Taiwanese elections in January. And, of course, here in the U.S., we’re going to have our election in November. I think that that is an issue that definitely stands out to me.

It’s not one that’s directly related to my work, but there are other issues that are constants. Child sexual exploitation, that’s an issue I do a lot of advocacy work on, and that’s an issue that remains constant and extremely important every year.

But if there’s one issue that I’d single out and say is very particular to this year specifically, it’s that it’s kind of the first year that we’re going to see our democratic institutions and these new (AI) technologies interact. I’m concerned, but I’m also hopeful in the sense that a lot of people are paying attention to this. So I think that this can be a really powerful year for learning and a chance to identify harms where they’re happening and hopefully take action. 

You’ve achieved a lot of success at a very young age before you went to the University of Oxford and then Harvard. When you look back at that time in your life, what do you wish you would‘ve known about entrepreneurship as a teenager? How did your college experience refine the work that you do now?

There are probably two things that I wish that I had known at that age that I definitely didn’t know. One was that, in entrepreneurship, failure is not a bad thing. It really is such an iterative process. For every success that I’ve had with ReThink, we’ve had so many moments of something not working, something not going through, us trying to figure something out. Certainly the work that we do, it’s so critical that we get it right. It’s so critical that we’re thinking about language in a really precise way, in a really nuanced way. It’s so critical that we’re thinking about what are the key concepts that we need to share with youth about anti hate and digital literacy? I figured, like a lot of young people — and a lot of people generally —  that if you fail at something, that means you must not be good at it or that it’s not working. And I think with entrepreneurship, there just needs to be a comfort with failure and a willingness to be open to learn from it. The best entrepreneurs are those that do that. I think some of the challenges we’ve seen on the internet today are not necessarily because of a discomfort or a failure, but an unwillingness to learn from it. I think that’s definitely something that I’ve learned since. 

Another thing that I didn’t know was that you don’t need to have a formal business education to be a great entrepreneur. I figured the best entrepreneurs were the ones who had gotten an MBA and had the fancy background. But the truth is, you can learn a lot on the job and you know your product and your mission, and you know the people that you’re trying to serve the best. Especially when you’re one of the people coming from the community that you’re trying to serve, and you have lived experience with the issue. That will take you so much further than an MBA ever will. I always felt a sense of insecurity of “I don’t have this formal training,” but I wish I could tell myself that what I did have, which was a knowledge of the ecosystem and the issues in a way that no adult in the room did, was tremendously more powerful. 

In terms of how college refined me, I think college was a time and an opportunity for me to start to get some of that formal education, and it was really, really powerful and helpful. But it also led me to say, “Hey, I actually did pretty good for not knowing all of this stuff.” It was the moment of realization that this is very powerful, and I’ve learned a lot. But also, “You can do a lot.” One of the biggest things I learned was that we are at the core of our education. So much of what I learned in school was not in the textbook. It was in conversation with other students or interrogating my own thoughts or perspectives. Recognizing your own source of power as an agent for change, as opposed to thinking that there is some prescribed way to make an impact, but that’s something that college affirmed for me that I didn’t really know as a young person that I would definitely tell myself now. You just have so much more capability and ability than you realize.

Obviously, you’ve won many different awards. You’ve received a lot of recognition. You’ve traveled to a lot of different places — Shark Tank, the White House, TED Talks. Is there one experience you’ve done that surprised you or felt really special to you?

A lot of things come to mind, including Mozilla’s Rise 25 award. If I were to pick something, I’d probably say the TED Talk that I did in India back in 2017. I went back to Mumbai, and it was actually a talk that I delivered in Hindi, which is not my first language. So, it was an interesting offer because it was a chance to talk about an issue that in India is very stigmatized — cyberbullying and mental health — to an audience that wasn’t maybe necessarily ready to hear the message and from someone who is not from the country. It surprised me because it was a chance to challenge myself. It was a chance to push myself out of my comfort zone to deliver a talk not in my native language. And it was also a chance, I think, to push the folks that I was speaking to out of their comfort zone and to say, “Hey, these aren’t topics that we talk about that we need to.” In the end, through that partnership with TED, they actually worked with a local television program in India and were able to televise the talks to 650 million Indian viewers, which is incredible. It was part of changing narratives of how we see certain issues. That was really powerful to me because it was anti hate advocacy in its most impactful form. 

I think to be able to do that work in a space where so few people were talking about these issues and know that I was igniting conversations, that felt really gratifying and super important. And it was awesome for me personally to have to push my own boundaries and kinda step out of my comfort zone a little.

We wanted to ask you about your book, “ReThink the Internet: How to Make The Digital World a Lot Less Sucky.” What inspired you to do that in 2022 at that point in your career? What was the most challenging part of that book to write? 

The inspiration for the book came from my experience traveling globally and talking with youth about the anti hate educational experiences they had, and coming away with this common thread, which was that it’s just so boring. (They think that) internet education is not exciting, it’s not interesting. (Youth felt that) It’s not engaging to me, I don’t like the resources that I’m being presented with, it makes us tune out.

And so my vision was, can I create an anti hate digital literacy resource that is written to youth in their voice that is actually something that as a 10-year-old, I would have wanted to read? That is fun, that is engaging, that is interesting. And so that was really what gave birth to ReThink The Internet.

It’s structured less as an educational guide and more as a series of seven fun vignettes and stories that teach seven lessons about responsible digital citizenship, but also offer opportunities for actually putting those lessons into practice, reflecting critically. So it’s a really nice balance, and the biggest piece of feedback I’ve heard is, “Wow, I actually really enjoyed reading this, and I went to it.” That was my vision, I wanted to create something young people actually liked.

What was the hardest part? It was probably thinking about how to do that. It was thinking back to me at, like, 10, 11, 12, like, what got me into a book. And how do I take these really complex topics like distinguishing inaccurate or misleading information from true information on the internet. How do I take a really big topic like that and make it accessible to a young audience and make it fun? So it was a lot of talking with young people about their experiences, reflecting on my own and brainstorming in creative ways to share stories that young people could resonate with. 

Where do you draw inspiration from in continuing the work that you do today?  

I draw inspiration from the young people that I work with. That is the young people who I have a chance to serve through my work with ReThink, who I advocate with for better internet. There are still so many young people who are suffering online because of internet harms. We see it today — there was a Senate judiciary hearing with five big tech CEOs testifying about youth safety. But there are so many young people who are survivors of internet challenges, parents that are survivors of internet challenges. And they, to me, are my constant inspiration and reminder that this work is not finished and that we have so much more to do and that we’ve got to press on and keep working for a better digital universe. 

What is one action that you think everyone should take to be able to make the internet a little better?

I guess this is very consistent with my work, but I genuinely do think it’s a really small and yet super powerful thing that everyone can do: just to pause and think before you post and share. And that’s not just with respect to what you’re saying, but it’s even with respect to an article that you might be sharing. A lot of people don’t think of retweeting an article as a form of cyberbullying or hate, but depending on what you’re amplifying, especially if you haven’t taken the time to read that article, you might be inadvertently contributing to the spread of information that is less than the gold standard. If you’re composing a tweet or a message, you might say something in the heat of the moment looking at a phone instead of someone’s face that you regret later that you never say to someone in person. If everyone can just take a second to pause and think before they say something, I imagine our internet would look very different.

We started Rise 25 to celebrate Mozilla’s 25th anniversary. What do you hope people are celebrating in the next 25 years?  

I hope people are celebrating an internet that is more kind and an internet that celebrates difference and affirms people as they are. An internet that protects and safeguards our rights. And Mozilla has really been at the forefront of that fight, protecting people’s privacy, protecting people’s agency, protecting people’s right to have the digital experience that they want to have. I hope that the next 25 years are spent celebrating an internet where users are at the forefront of our digital experience and that it is one that is fundamentally safe, free and on.

What gives you hope about the future of the internet? 

I think what gives me hope about the future of the internet is the number of incredible young people, and members of historically underrepresented communities, that are stepping up and demanding a seat at the table when it comes to building a better internet and when it comes to building technologies of the future. I think that gap is one of the biggest reasons that we’ve seen so many internet harms today, being that we didn’t have young people that were a part of that process. Way back when Web 2.0 was being launched, we didn’t have a diverse group of technologists creating our digital world. I think today, we’re starting to see that paradigm shift, where those voices are finally starting to be invited into the fold, and also we’re starting to demand our seat at the table. And we’re starting to — as activists, as technologists, as builders, as creators, as visionaries — see the internet that we want and start putting it into place. I think that that gives me a lot of hope because with our perspectives and lived experiences at the forefront, I think we really can create an internet that belongs to everyone. 

Get Firefox

Get the browser that protects what’s important

The post Entrepreneur Trisha Prabhu dishes on technology’s evolution, AI and her early career success appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we know the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for human connection, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, the sites and forums that shaped them, and what reclaiming the internet really looks like.

This month we chat with Vivian Tu, also known as Your Rich BFF, a former Wall Street trader-turned-expert, personal finance educator, and entrepreneur about her new book (available everywhere now), the internet’s worst DJ, the personal finance corner of the internet, and her own community, the BFFs.

What is your favorite corner of the internet?
Robert Irwin interacting with wild animals at the Australia Zoo! I grew up watching his dad on the Animal Planet channel and now it’s so fun to watch him continue his family’s legacy of love for animals. The content is soothing and many of the animals are so cute!

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?
Whatever we’re calling the Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce romance, it’s a topic that I can’t seem to escape.

What is the one tab you always regret closing?
This never happens because I don’t close tabs. I wish I was kidding. I’m always running ~40 tabs open at once— to the point where you can barely see each tab and my laptop sounds like a rocket ship about to take off. The BFFs always give me a hard time about this any time I show my computer screen on camera.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?
DJ Mandy, the internet’s worst DJ! While most DJs that go viral on the internet are known for their incredible mashups or amazing sets, DJ Mandy is specifically known for intentionally DJing awfully. She’ll blend Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen and Act Up by City Girls and any time I watch her content I am laughing out loud within 45 seconds. I’ve sent her mixes to all of my friends. She makes me laugh and I have no idea how she does it with a straight face.

What was the first online community you engaged with?
The personal finance community! I create content around budgeting, saving, investing, etc. myself —  one of the first communities I engaged with online were other folks on their personal finance journeys. It’s been so fun getting to know other finance creators, as well as the BFFs on their personal finance journeys.

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now?
There are so many!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/10/14/grief-healing-families-joy/
https://fortune.com/2023/10/11/return-to-office-costs-commuting-lunch/
https://www.bonappetit.com/gallery/cheap-recipes

If you could create your corner of the internet, what would it look like?
I’m lucky because I feel like I have! Most of my audience, who I call the BFFs, come to my corner to learn more about financial tips and tricks! We cover everything from lowering your rent to buying luxury goods to saving on your tax bill, and so much more. That said, if I wasn’t a personal finance creator —  I would 100% be a Slime creator. I am weirdly drawn to watching people make different types of slime and the ASMR of listening to them squish it around!

Why do you think younger generations are more comfortable talking about money among their peers and online?
Since we’re able to often hide behind usernames and profile pictures of memes, there’s a level of anonymity! You can have a more candid conversation with an internet stranger than you might with someone in your day-to-day IRL life. Also, I will say social media has created an unprecedented level of transparency with influencers telling us everything from how much they paid for their nose job, to how to travel hack a $2k-a-night hotel room, to how much student debt regular people have. This has made conversations around money more common, more comfortable, and more democratized. I, for one, LOVE this new level of financial honesty.

Former Wall Street trader-turned-expert, personal finance educator, public speaker, entrepreneur, and newly minted author, Vivian Tu AKA Your Rich BFF is on a global mission to make the financial industry less “male, pale, and stale.”  She is the founder and CEO of the financial equity phenomenon, “Your Rich BFF,” which she developed as a passion project to destigmatize and make the rules of personal finance accessible and digestible to non-experts and marginalized communities. Her dedication to promoting financial literacy has earned her cross-platform fame and notoriety, having garnered 6 million followers and counting, as well as honors on both the Forbes’ ‘30 Under 30 – Social Media’ (2023) and inaugural ‘Top Creators’ (2022 + 2023) lists.  In addition to her breakout digital content, Vivian continues to spread her wealth of knowledge on her top-charting podcast, “Networth and Chill” (Audioboom Studios), a first-of-its-kind podcast offering accessible advice and lessons in finance, featuring Vivian alongside notable experts, professionals, and famous faces to break down the economics of our lives. She is also the author to the book Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life available everywhere now.

The post Your Rich BFF, Vivian Tu, on creating her own personal finance community appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Web browsing is a pervasive part of modern life, and the quality of the experience directly affects the quality of your day. When your tasks are disrupted by slow or unresponsive pages, it is frustrating and distracting. As such, performance is a key component of Mozilla’s vision for the web.

To deliver against our vision and enable a better online experience for everyone, we’ve been working hard on making Firefox even faster. We’re extremely happy to report that this has resulted in a significant improvement in speed over the past year.

Improvements on benchmarks

One way to judge browser performance is by using industry benchmarks. We have seen measurable improvements here, specifically around the popular benchmark Speedometer 2.1.  This benchmark measures browser responsiveness by simulating user interactions (such as manipulating a list of to-do items).

Since January 2023, Firefox’s Speedometer score has improved by 50%, a significant performance improvement for our users.

Performance on the web

Yes, benchmarks matter, but it’s worth pointing out they only simulate what a user could experience. It was important for us to verify that the performance improvements were actually being felt by users.

We’ve observed improvements on performance metrics that matter. In particular, pages are appearing 15% faster on average:

It is extremely gratifying to see that the improvements in benchmark scores are actually being felt by Firefox users everywhere. If you’re interested in getting more technical details, check out our recent blog post on Mozilla Hacks. 

It’s been an exciting year for the Firefox Performance team – and we’re not stopping any time soon. This is a preview of the work we’ve been doing, and we’ll be sharing more technical detailed posts in the next few weeks on Mozilla Hacks. 

Get Firefox

Get the browser that protects what’s important

The post Quick as a Fox: Firefox keeps getting faster appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Did you know that the red panda is also known as a firefox? Sept. 16 is International Red Panda Day, so we thought it would be a good time to visit a Firefox, ahem red panda, in real life and talk to their caretakers at zoos across the U.S.

Red pandas are the first panda — discovered nearly 50 years before the giant panda. Unfortunately, they are also endangered with as few as 2,500 remaining in the wild. Founded in 2007, Red Panda Network (RPN) responds to threats to the species with community-based programs that empower local people to conserve red pandas and their habitat. You can learn about RPN’s work here. 

Additionally, across the world, there are several zoos that participate in a breeding program to help grow the red panda population. Now is a great time to visit the red pandas at your nearest zoo.

Before you go, let us tell you more about the red pandas and the people who care for those adorable red cat-bears (another moniker they go by). We reached out to five zoos who participate in the special red panda program, and sent questions to learn from the zookeepers and the red pandas they care for.

Click on the links below to read more about the red pandas and their caretakers:

• Idaho Falls Zoo (Idaho Falls, Idaho)
• Potter Park Zoo (Lansing, Michigan) 
• Sacramento Zoo (Sacramento, California)
• Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle, Washington)
• Zoo Atlanta (Atlanta, Georgia)

Thank you so much to the zookeepers who spent time to share their knowledge with us. We’d love to learn more about other red pandas in the world, so if you happen to be at your local zoo, share your photos with us on Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. We can’t wait to see more firefoxes!

Get Firefox

Get the browser that protects what’s important

The post Seeing a Firefox IRL appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.