Alex Leavitt - Ten Provocations for Safety in the Metaverse
Host
Crystal Lee
Abstract:
What does it mean to be safe in an interactive digital environment? Trust & Safety has become a formalized tech industry discipline to address this question, but most companies still struggle to define harm, design interventions, and determine the impact of so-called "safety" initiatives. Even more, interactive digital environments pose significant additional challenges. In social VR, more complications arise around investigating, operationalizing, and measuring real-time interactions between thousands of individuals, in addition to both building content moderation frameworks to govern such environments and providing users support through safety-related interactive tools and resources. This talk proposes an agenda for research and product development for addressing harm in interactive digital environments and improving the safety of people's experiences online.
Bio:
Alex Leavitt, PhD (they/them) is a computational ethnographer and Principal Researcher in Trust & Safety at Roblox, where they lead social science research on content moderation, international harm measurement, child safety, and emerging interactive technologies. Previously, they worked at Meta on Trust & Safety research initiatives spanning misinformation & politics; polarization & social conflict; COVID-19 & the pandemic; and global humanitarian & activist support networks.
The talk will also be streamed over Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/99585052077.
What does it mean to be safe in an interactive digital environment? Trust & Safety has become a formalized tech industry discipline to address this question, but most companies still struggle to define harm, design interventions, and determine the impact of so-called "safety" initiatives. Even more, interactive digital environments pose significant additional challenges. In social VR, more complications arise around investigating, operationalizing, and measuring real-time interactions between thousands of individuals, in addition to both building content moderation frameworks to govern such environments and providing users support through safety-related interactive tools and resources. This talk proposes an agenda for research and product development for addressing harm in interactive digital environments and improving the safety of people's experiences online.
Bio:
Alex Leavitt, PhD (they/them) is a computational ethnographer and Principal Researcher in Trust & Safety at Roblox, where they lead social science research on content moderation, international harm measurement, child safety, and emerging interactive technologies. Previously, they worked at Meta on Trust & Safety research initiatives spanning misinformation & politics; polarization & social conflict; COVID-19 & the pandemic; and global humanitarian & activist support networks.
The talk will also be streamed over Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/99585052077.