Toxic Twitter

Toxic Twitter
By Suzie Dunn New research by Amnesty International demonstrates the egregious level of abuse and harassment women face on social media, particularly women leaders and women of colour, women from ethnic or religious minorities, lesbian, bisexual or transgender women, non-binary individuals, and women with disabilities. Dillon Black and Suzie Dunn of The eQuality Project had the opportunity to meet with Amnesty International’s Azmina Dhrodia while she wa...

How Our Relationship with AI Reflects our Attitudes Towards Women

How Our Relationship with AI Reflects our Attitudes Towards Women
By Sarah Keeshan Before the 1990s, many of the defining representations of AI in popular culture were male, whether embodying a broad societal threat such as Gort of The Day the Earth Stood Still, the cylons of the original Battlestar Galactica, the eponymous machine in The Terminator, Ash in Alien or warmer and friendlier individuals, such as C-3PO in Star Wars, and Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Notable exceptions to this pattern include the...

GKO Launching in Canada with a Focus on Privacy

GKO Launching in Canada with a Focus on Privacy
By Robert H. Porter This blog has been cross-posted with Global Kids Online, and marks the beginning of the Canadian Kids Online project, which is officially launching in 2018. The eQuality project, in partnership with UNICEF Canada and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) will be bringing Global Kids Online to Canada in 2018 with the launch of the Canadian Kids Online project led by Professor Valerie Steeves (University of Ottawa).

Hate Speech and Spray Paint

Hate Speech and Spray Paint
By Robert H. Porter A German comedian recently made international headlines by stencilling and spray painting 30 offensive tweets outside of Twitter’s Hamburg Headquarters. This was part of Shahak Shapira’s #HEYTWITTER (NB: contains graphic language) campaign, launched in response to Twitter’s failure to delete any of the 300 tweets that Shapira reported to Twitter for their racist, Islamaphobic, anti-Semitic, and homophobic content. According to Shapira,

Online Censorship Through Selective Demonetization

Online Censorship Through Selective Demonetization
By Robert H. Porter YouTube recently made the decision to clarify its policy concerning the “advertiser friendliness” of content creator’s videos, which has led to an apparent increase in the demonetization of online content. Demonitization is essentially the reduction of content creators’ ability to collect ad-based revenue from their content. While this demonetization has been occurring since 2012, it was only recently that YouTube changed its communica

Inequality in Gaming

Inequality in Gaming
By Trevor Milford (eQuality Project Student) On 15 September, professional gamer and game designer Stephanie Harvey came to the University of Ottawa to discuss her experiences in the gaming industry. As a doctoral candidate working on issues involving discrimination in gaming, I was particularly interested to hear Stephanie’s insights on how inequality and virtual harm impacted her livelihood. I’d heard about the event through a promotional article entitl