Fiona Coath
Fiona is a lead software developer and consultant currently working at Thoughtworks. Her specialty is being a generalist. She enjoys problem solving across a range of technologies including natural language processing and data analytics. Her passion for social justice and equality keeps inspiring her to investigate the relationships between technology and society. When she isn’t solving challenging problems, she enjoys craft, exploring the world and the colour purple.
Session
What does it mean for democracy when we live in a world where hyper personalised misinformation and bot armies manipulate public opinion? This propaganda is fueled by social media companies, who's business depends on growing their user base, increasing engagement and improving targeting. Just getting visibility on what users are being shown is challenging, even with current EU regulations. As is often the case, users in the global south are most vulnerable, without robust regulation and with fewer moderators per user for many languages.
As technologists we are well positioned to understand this threat. How might we leverage this to create positive change? By exploring examples of people who blew whistles, enabled regulation, or taught others how to stay safe online, we can take back hope and get inspired to fight back against surveillance capitalism.
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