QueerSafe

Introduction

QueerSafe is an initiative, that's how we like to call it. It is and will always be a work in progress. It is not a project with some set deadlines to meet, it is an effort to paint the rainbow with an inherit sense of safety and privacy, two things which are very luxurious to everyone but more so to queer people. To combat issues of trolling, bullying and to protect the online sense of social media security and privacy of the queer users to also help them have good experience. 

Problem Statement

Social Media is been our new source of information and platform for interacting with the society. It has it’s pros and cons but cons are majorly identified as discrimination, trolling and harassment. How audience responds to a LGBTQ identity in form of a social support. LGBT people face substantial mental health disparities as compared with the general population. It can lead to more depression and anxiety during interaction with society on social media .  Moreover on social media sometimes disclosing how they feel and about violations of rights for them causes stress due to the unpredictable responses they may receive like mass bullying in form of spamming and trolls

1. Trolling and Bullying

This is the most common problem faced by the LGBTQ community on any social media platform. This is not only the most common but also a universal problem prevalent across all nations and all social media platforms. Trolling here refers to a form of bullying happening in the realms of the online world in the form of abusive comments, messages and negative publicity of some user in a targeted manner.

2.  No Closet

On engaging with various queer people, one interesting yet unnoticed problem that surfaced was the sense forced identity disclosure to the public. On platforms such as the Instagram people identify other community people just by looking at the number of mutual followers from the community (who they already know) this is a chain reaction and it destroys the closet of so many people who are not ready to come out yet.

3. Vilifying Experiences

Less talk about mental health issues makes it a taboo. Although a lot of debate and discussion is happening around it but when someone who from the LGBTQ community talks about their state of being, they are often called out for being dramatic and doing it for clout. The question is to what extent is this acceptable? The first step towards addressing mental health is to acknowledge the issues and the struggles one has, online media needs to be a safer space for it. 

Agenda

1. To provide a safe online experience to the users.
2. To help them choose their followers wisely.
3. To provide an open and safer environment for talking about various mental health issues.
4. To enable them to have more control over their online privacy and identity.

Approach

We had two agendas at hand:

1. To understand and comprehensively study the online behavior of Queer community and 

    why?
        1. To help build models to improve their online experience

        2. To help them avoid or counter trolling

2.  To help them provide a safer environment in terms of expressing their mental health concerns

    why?

        1. To help them deal with their mental health issues better

        2. To break the taboo

Data Collection: 

1. List of users who identify themselves as LGBTQ
   

    How? 

    1. Manually 

    2. Scrapping bio(s) of followers of some pro-LGBTQ pages and identifying key words and mentions.

 We restricted to 20 such users. 

2. Data of abusive content targeted to queer people 

3. Combined with data of mental health abusive content

Methodology 

Achieved What?

Team Members:

1. Atul - 2017032
2. Sunil Kumar - 2017112
3. Prince Chhillar - 2017257 

4. Sagar Draveriya - 2017186
5. Gurpreet Dhillon - 2017051

6. Gajal Shankar - 2017150