Language: English (mozilla)
With the rise of social media, citizens of the MEA region started using the internet as a way to amplify their voices discussing diverse topics, and defending the causes they believe in. Hence breaking taboos and taking a virtual space to exist despite their differences. In Tunisia, LGBTQIA+ movement and organizations utilized this boom to thrive. However, Hate Speech against this community arose parallely on different social media platforms.
On the most commonly used social media platforms, the surge of cyberviolence against the LGBTQIA+ community in the MEA region has become so common that more often than not, it translates to actions on the ground. Local dialects, automatically undetectable, used to target Queer people and activists vary from attacks against gay and lesbian people, transgender individuals, and anyone with a non-normative identity. Consequently, manual identification of Hate Speech on social media has become impossible, making the need for AI-based automatic identification assistance vital.
iCompass, an AI startup, and “the Initiative Mawjoudin We Exist for Euqality”, an LGBTQAI+ NGO, both Tunisia based, propose to lead a workshop on how to build an automatic system based on AI, ranging from collecting high quality data, methodology to annotate the data, and training AI models.
This workshop will be focused on dialects in the MEA region, and more specifically the Tunisian dialect as a use case. The aim is to bring attention to the lack of dialect-based tools that automatically detect Hate Speech in addition to developing community-adequate solutions.
This workshop will be focused on underrepresented languages and dialects in Africa and the Middle East, and more specifically the Tunisian dialect as a use case. The aim is to bring attention to the lack of dialect-based tools that automatically detect Hate Speech in addition to developing community-adequate solutions.
Why did you choose that space? How does your session align with the space description?:This workshop is an interdisciplinary workshop combining both technical and social justice capacities bringing forward the case study of the MEA region.
The workshop topic that we chose aligns perfectly with the intersection of gender and sexuality issues with AI and technology. We will be highlighting how this intersection translates on the ground.
the workshop is an opportunity to have groups both from the technical background and advocacy for gender and sexuality coming together to brainstorm solutions and working opportunities. Therefore, the number of people, even if minimal, will not be an issue as everyone present will have the opportunity to participate and give them input.
What happens after MozFest? We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after MozFest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:As a follow up, we will keep contact with the participants and invite them to a series of meetings where we can concretely establish an action plan for the solutions suggested. iCompass and Mawjoudin will be both committed to strategize, budgetise, and execute this action plan in the short and medium run. The collaboration and experience of the attendees will be an inspiration for us to build our own context-sensitive solutions.
What language would you like to host your session in?:English