Hi I'm Denny Starks, and this is Oliver Haimson.
And we're going to be talking to you today
about our paper, Trans Time: Safety, Privacy, and Content
Warnings on a Transgender-Specific Social
Media Site.
First we would like to note that when we use the term trans,
we mean people whose current genders are different than that
assigned at birth.
And this specifically includes non-binary people.
The internet has had substantial positive benefits
for trans-people, but online spaces are usually not designed
for transgender people.
Social media users often use existing popular social media
sites like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter
to post content related to their transitions.
But these sites sometimes lack in there for instance,
end-support for trans-users that can sometimes
be harmful or hostile for trans-people.
Trans Time is a social media site
specifically for trans-gender, non-binary,
gender-nonconforming and questioning people.
The site aims to be a space where trans-people can document
their transitions and build community in ways that they
cannot on other sites.
Because trans users needs are often not fully supported
by mainstream social media sites,
there are many potential benefits
to a trans-specific site.
To examine these potential benefits,
we asked, how can a trans-specific social media
site uniquely support trans-users.
So we did a couple of different things,
and also you can see here are demographics that you can read.
But we did six interviews with current Trans Time users.
And we also did focus groups with a broader
trans-population, three sessions, two was in Ann Arbor
and one was in Philadelphia.
And so I'm going to discuss three of the themes that
contribute to trans-sensibility to uniquely support trans
people, and they could inform future social media site design
that supports trends individuals and communities.
And so the first important aspect was safety.
So what does an online safe space
look like for trans-communities?
Next was privacy and audience.
So how should privacy work on a site like this.
And then finally we looked at content warning.
So how should content warnings work on a social media
site for trans and non-binary people
so looking at Trans Time as a safe space one thing
that we've found is that the code of conduct which you see
a screenshot of here was actually really
important to participants.
And an online safe space for trans people
really depended on the following factors: So small size,
all-trans user base, maintenance of boundaries,
community-based contextual moderation, community
guidelines, and lack of censorship.
One participant said, I feel like it has a great possibility
to be a safe space.
I feel like it's necessary to have that kind of safe space,
because in other pages you always end up feeling or seeing
this transphobia which people don't realize they're
being totally offensive.
We also looked at privacy and audience on Trans Time.
And in general, we found that participants
preferred default settings to be more private rather than more
public.
And people also requested more granular privacy settings.
Next, we looked at content warnings on Trans Time,
and you can see an example here of how content warnings work
on the site.
People really discussed wanting to have more
personalized content warnings.
And one participant described this
as a really lovely and good example of care
woven into a tech artifact.
Participants also described to one thing
a customizable block list and allow list for types of words
that they would or would not want in content
they see on the site.
And one described this as having more
nuance in what you're showing and what you're hiding
is useful.
Because I know there are certain tags
that maybe you just want to see and there are certain tags
that you want to avoid.
So despite the extra steps it took
to tag content participants in our study, valued
the extra information and the extra care
that content warnings provided.
And after that they were willing to deal
with the added friction and the extra work of labeling content.
So in summary, we found that there
is space and need for a sustainable long term
trend specific online space where
people can share both exciting and mundane aspects
of trans-lives.
And such a site could be made safe by employing
the features that we found support safe space on Trans
Time.
So I want to thank the UM Institute for research
on women and gender.
For funding this work, and thank you.
Thank you.