Herramientas/Tool Index
Uli
What is it?
Uli is a browser add-on that:
Denormalizes the everyday violence that people of marginalized genders experience online in India, and.
Provides tools for collective relief and response.
It is an attempt to reverse the top-down logic of platform moderation and center the experiences of people subjected to gender-based violence online.
The add-on installation link and user guide can be found here: https://uli.tattle.co.in/
Why was it developed?
The graphic narrative titled 'Personal (Cyber) Space' published in 2016 by Parthasarthy and Malhotra narrates the experience of a young internet user. The animated short comic presented by Kadak, a South Asian women's collective, asks, "If one says something, there is a fear of a hateful response. But if one doesn't say something, isn't that silence counterproductive?", ending with the question, "then what does one say?".
Violence, abuse and hate speech on the web have become pervasive in the social networking experience and existing scholarship suggests that it is those situated on the margins who are most affected. People of marginalized genders in India are disproportionately affected. At the same time, the business models of social networking platforms skew incentives against protecting users who use social networks in non-dominant languages. Uli is an attempt to build tools to protect and enable a collective response for social media users of marginalized genders.
Why are we sharing it?
The problem of online violence involves legal, political, social, cultural and technological complexities that make any easy solution impossible. This overdetermined nature demands that we seek solutions from multiple avenues. As with all of Tattle's projects, we do not expect technology to provide all the answers, but rather to be intertwined with human action.
Have you reused or are you planning to reuse this tool?
Simply send an e-mail to code@iadb.org requesting a "tool reuse badge", exclusive to the IDB.