Two students at the University of Ottawa (U of O) and McGill University have created a tool to filter homophobic, racist, and other hateful content online.
Nikola Draca, a third-year statistics student at the U of O, and Angus McLean, a third-year engineering student at McGill, worked together to create the extension called Soothe, which filters out unwanted content online.
Soothe works as an extension on the Google Chrome web browser where a bar pops up at the right side of the screen with various options—homophobic, racist, sexist, transphobic, violent, and sexually violent—allowing the user to choose specifically the type of content they want filtered.
Draca said he got the idea because he had a friend in high school who was suffering from severe anxiety.
“She asked me if I knew a tool similar to this that could help her get rid of trauma triggers related to sexual harassment. I looked around a little bit and couldn’t find anything that was suitable or a complete solution,” he said.
Several years later, Draca and McLean were at an event called Hackathon Carleton, where developers come together to create an application or a program, and they saw the harassment category. He said they wanted to try to attempt to make something that would be a complete solution to the problem.
“This is an incredibly relevant topic now. We’re reading everyday about online harassment. It’s something that’s discussed in detail, but there aren’t proactive products or solutions given to people that suffer from the effects of online harassment,” Draca said.
The extension was initially designed for people who have severe anxiety, but he said they have also seen a lot of youth using the platform, and added that it offers value to both of these demographics and populations.
Sam Richardson, the administrative co-ordinator at the Gender and Sexuality Resource Centre at Carleton, said this app will be very helpful to individuals who are looking for a “safe haven and an online escape.”
“I do believe that an app like Soothe can really provide a moment for a person to have a rest before they can go and pick themselves up again,” he said.
While some people might argue that this is a kind of censorship, Richardson said otherwise.
“I would argue that it’s not censorship because you’re entitled to say what you want to but we don’t have to listen to it,” he said. “But you can filter out your content without an app. If you know you have a homophobic uncle, Facebook has a great feature which allows you to unfollow him . . . The important message is that you can choose not to engage and to have a break.”
The Charlatan added the Soothe extension to test it out and was able to filter out headlines within a website as well as the comments section, where the content is blurred out.
However, the user is still be able to view the blurred out content by clicking on it to remove the blur.
Draca said while they have 500 users so far, it is still under development and they are hoping to release more features and bring more people on board to help improve Soothe.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
