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KOKOBOT - The Airbnb-Owned Tech Startup - Data Mining Tumblr Users’ Mental Health Crises for “Content”
I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.
Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)
But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.
I couldn’t even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I’m glad I stopped to read, because:
- What you say on there won’t be confidential. (And for context, I tried it out and the things people were looking for help with? I didn’t even feel comfortable sharing here as examples, it was all so deeply personal and painful)
- Also, what you say on there? Is now…
- Koko’s intellectual property - giving them the right to use it in any way they see fit, including
- Publicly performing or displaying your “content” (also known as your mental health crisis) in any media format and in any media channel without limitation
- Do this indefinitely after you end your account with them
- Sell / share this “content” with other businesses
- Any harm you come to using Koko? That’s on you.
- And Koko won’t take responsibility for anything someone says to you on there (which is bleak when people are using it to spread Christianity to people in crisis)
I was curious about their business model. They’re a venture-capitol based tech startup, owned by Airbnb, the famous mental health professionals with a focus on ethical business practices./s They’re also begging for donations despite having already been given 2.5 million dollars in research funding. (If you want a deep dive on why people throw crazy money at tech startups, see my other post here)
They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn’t find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of “People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find”. Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.
So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.
(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don’t read if you’re not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)
Kokobot is incredibly predatory and exploitative. I wrote a post about how it exploits minors’ empathy and gamifies “giving mental health advice”, resulting in an unregulated mess that can only do harm to teens’ mental health in the long run.
There are young people on tumblr that actively seek support from KokoBot right now, if you check the tag for recent posts. Those people did not get paid to promote it, so do not harrass them. If you can, direct them towards resources about Kokobot (like this post) that are more transparent about what this company is up to.
This… is DEEPLY DISTURBING.
SIGNAL.
BOOST.with the caveat that its early and I haven’t had my coffee, on top of all the bullshit that everyone else has pointed out above, it appears that their was no consent process, altered or otherwise. according to two of the articles (one published, one in submission but not published) the researchers (paraphrased) “showed participants the Koko ToS, which said that information may be used for research.”
translation: these motherfuckers are (apparently) just out here conducting research without even telling participants what they’re involved in.
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As someone who has mispronounced so many words because I never actually heard them. I appreciate this post
(via zellkabellk)
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“Oh [other profession] wants better working conditions? WELL [MY profession] is HARDER I work TWENTY HOUR DAYS and I am NOT ALLOWED BREAKS and I’m PAID FOR SHIT and I have NO INSURANCE and I NEVER SEE MY CHILDREN so WHY are YOU COMPLAINING LOL”
have you considered that maybe YOUR job ALSO should not suck that much
Story time. This is not so much for OP but for anyone else who might not have union experience: Bear in mind that there is a strong propaganda effort to get people to this viewpoint. They’re not being willfully obtuse.
I spoke to a neighbour the other day. She’d just taken voluntary a lay-off from her factory job because she had an ongoing injury and they wouldn’t let her adjust her hours in a sensible way. She’d been struggling to make it work anyway but her back was getting really bad. So when they put the word out that they were looking for volunteers to take lay-offs, she put up her hand. Still, she was proud to tell me that she was considered one of their best and fastest workers, even with the injury. She was frustrated that one of the newer workers seemed to have gotten various accommodations, even though that worker was nowhere near as good.
I could tell that she’d been having similar conversations with her coworkers on the factory floor for years. Who got extras they didn’t “deserve.” Who was a shoddy worker and made life harder for everyone. Who came in to work even though their parent had just died to make sure that nobody had to pick up their slack. And all of that pervaded with propaganda about “greedy unions” who slim down your already-skinny paycheque just because they’re all lazy slackers who don’t want to pull their weight and don’t appreciate the nice boss for hiring them. (This is the same across all types of jobs. Next story time I’ll talk about two university profs who grew to fame and fortune via unions and the social safety net and yet both engaged in union busting.)
My neighbour’s injury, incidentally, was a result of her work at the factory, but she didn’t want to try for compensation or anything else. She’d “never taken a single sick day in 20 years” and wasn’t “the kind of person who made waves” so she was just going the regular unemployment route but finding the systems obscure and challenging. She was hurt and shocked that her old employer would treat one of their best workers this way and leave them to deal with the fall-out by themselves.
Meanwhile, Canadian (federal) government workers were striking in Ottawa. And she expressed frustration that they felt “entitled to strike” when the (provincial) services she was accessing were so shoddy and difficult to navigate. Why did they “get to” strike if their work was apparently so poor? She had no sympathy for them.
I pushed back gently. Her factory floor job wasn’t union, but the admin staff was union. They seemed to get a better deal. We spoke about strength in numbers, and how hard it is to try and get your due from your employer without anyone to help you. And how they make all these forms complicated on purpose so it’s easier to deny you money or other support. And how it would be great to have someone to go to meetings with you, who knew all the legal stuff, and who could help you with the forms, and get you the money for the medical services you needed.
She wasn’t pro-union by the time I left, but we’d agreed on a few things, and I’d framed a few of her concerns in a way that made her more ambivalent about strikes (rather than outright hostile). Still, as we were saying our goodbyes, she said, “let’s hope they hurry up and get back to work eh!”
Because imagine what it would cost her to turn around and agree that unions are good, and strikes are good, and you should fight your employer for your fair compensation and your rights. Twenty years of taking no sick leave, working herself to the bone on not enough money, laid off and struggling with the system for basic support. She’s proud of her suffering, all the times she didn’t complain, all the times she pushed on even as the going got harder and harder.
Because if she can’t be proud of it… then what? She’s dumb for taking a non-union job? She should’ve organised and could’ve had better pay and a severance package and free physiotherapy for life? If she accepts that unions and strikes are good, she’s still in pain, still unemployed, still stuck with her lack of support, but now also feels like a fucking idiot for giving 20 years of her life to a boss who threw her out without a second thought.
So. Don’t put up with union busting and do talk to the people in your life about solidarity, but do realise that being anti-union isn’t just folks being aggressively wrong for the sake of it. They’ve been lied to. And they possibly have a lot of complex grief and identity and other experiences tied up in this.
“If she accepts that unions and strikes are good, she’s still in pain, still unemployed, still stuck with her lack of support, but now also feels like a fucking idiot for giving 20 years of her life to a boss who threw her out without a second thought.”
This.
And this applies to a lot of other things you might want people to change their minds about.
(via zellkabellk)
Posted on August 15, 2023 via Shinga with 23,967 notes
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*me reaping* i know i for sure did not sow this much no way all this was me
(via zellkabellk)
Posted on August 15, 2023 via with 77,950 notes
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I don’t have the capacity to be coherent right now but. this movie is so good
actually I think I regained my ability to be coherent in the tags and you all need to see them <3
(via fuckyeahpikacha)
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but… they’re not. Trans is short for “transitioning” which is to say you go from one gender to the other. Non-binary people are not transitioning to another gender. They’re just not moving from one to another.
trans is not and has never been short for transitioning you dumb hoe
trans is short for transgender dumbass
also for those who don’t get it, the creator of the trans flag herself (monica helms, to be exact) has stated verbally, herself, that the white stripe in the flag was for nonbinary individuals + that nonbinary ppl are absolutely trans
if you exclude nonbinary folks and tell us we’re not trans go fuck yourselves
For people who forget: the whole thing of being transgender is that you identify with a gender that isn’t your sex/what you were born as. Because no one is assigned nonbinary at birth, being nonbinary is inherently transgender because you’re not cis about it.
(via zellkabellk)
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does anyone know if i can like block sites from appearing in my google images searches??? i keep getting those awful ai generated things with a hand coming out of a man’s neck and just straight up not what i was looking for, because this was in a search for “curly hair in medieval paintings”. it happens every time i search for anything vaguely art-reference-like and it’s so fucking annoying and it clutters my search results so much. i don’t wanna add specific commands to the query every time too, what i need is like a browser extension or something
okay i found one! it works! everyone come get your blacklist 👍👍👍
(via zellkabellk)
