EchoSpace

What is the problem with social media today?

Aside from its occasional glitches or online drama; one glaring problem is the people who run the sites. Since the beginning of technological innovation, machines have been built, run and managed by white, heteronormative men. Even if unknowingly, digital worlds have consistently been modelled and guided by their heteronormative, often right-wing, ideologies, and have expanded into the new digital age with our common, social media platforms. Figures like Elon Musk, known for his extremist ideologies, have governed and shaped spaces like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp for the past few years, taking these once inclusive sites into hostile spaces that favour the heteronormative and outcast minority communities. Specifically focusing on the LGBTQ+ community, we discovered how toxic and dangerous online platforms have become. Online hate, harassment and bullying are at an all time high, guidelines steadily becoming lax to favour more homophobic speech and actions under the ideology of ‘free speech’. Members of the community feel outcast and unsafe, where this online hate has expanded into reality and makes those who are different the target of mass hate and bigotry.

EchoSpace aims to challenge this problem. Developed from real interviews and understanding real experiences of the LGBTQ+ community, we aim to train an AI moderation software fairly. Rather than a biased view that many AI systems have, our system listens directly to the problems and experiences of vulnerable individuals, understanding them on a more human level and making moderation choices that favour the ethical well-being of the user. Challenging the history of digital spaces, we instead give power back to the community, allowing the space to be governed by those using it, constantly evolving as the community develops and explores sexual identity and expression within an online safe space.

Furthermore, research indicates that avatars, a digital version of ourselves that enable us to physically exist online, are not currently inclusive. Once again, they are modelled under a heteronormative gaze, assigned ‘male’ and ‘female’ ideologies that excludes non-binary individuals, or those who do not present as the socially accepted gender. Inspired by our own workshop encouraging LGBTQ+ students to draw and create their dream avatar, EchoSpace moves beyond the boundaries of ‘male’ and ‘female’, allowing users to customise an avatar to be as wild and abstract as they can imagine, a form of online gender euphoria.

So what are you waiting for? Come and explore the fantastical world of EchoSpace!