I've decided to capture more images like this & upload it to my brain memory. Hopefully, it might help me erase the gory images and videos I cultivated for years due to my former job. I know this may sound silly, but it's working well for my mental health #connectwithnature😊 #happyEarthday

And if you do nothing else, please watch this short video narrated by Fasica, the lead author of the CHI paper, Nuredin Ali, and exiled Ethiopian journalist @zekuzelalem.bsky.social:

peertube.dair-institute.org/w/wTpAFSQkB2...

Please send it over to anyone who will listen and can do something about it. Our people can’t afford another war.

Our first academic paper on the topic will be presented at CHI in May: drive.google.com/file/d/1gPcU....

➡️ Find our work thus far on www.dair-institute.org/tigray-genoc....

➡️ More importantly, we have a statement describing the unbridled war mongering currently spreading on ALL social media platforms, setting the stage for all out war between Ethiopia & Eritrea:
www.dair-institute.org/blog/tigray-...

I will never forget the genocidal mania among the Ethiopian intelligentsia. It was a popular genocide, with your “progressive” diaspora falling over themselves to deny and justify it. The least we can do is raise awareness about what has happened and what is about to happen.

and the longest continuous internet shutdown ever recorded & moderating genocidal content targeting your people.

One of the moderators saw his cousin being murdered because that was a video routed to him. He wasn’t even allowed to take a short mental health break.
www.noemamag.com/the-human-co...

We collaborated with content moderators like Fasica to understand the horrific working conditions of moderators. Imagine your family going through one of the worst sieges in recorded history with nothing going in & out for 2 years,

data-workers.org/fasica/

all social media is 4chan in these languages & contexts.

We've spent 3 years documenting these failures. We had no language technology to do this–not even the equivalent of a spell checker. So we partnered with Lesan founded by Asmelash Teka to create those tools.

restofworld.org/2023/3-minut...

The VP who sent an “anonymous” letter to HR telling me to retract my paper & setting the stage for my firing commented that plenty of work was being done in that arena. But contrary to his claims & Yann LeCun’s lies saying that “95% of hate speech on Facebook is removed by ‘AI’,”

I told people @ Google about this & asked them to build language technology & have human moderation, in so-called "under-resourced languages” like Tigrinya. Even though we were at Google, any concerns sent to YouTube went into a void never to even be acknowledged.
restofworld.org/2021/why-fac...

Unlike Tigrayans in the diaspora whose sisters were being raped & parents murdered, I didn’t know what was happening on the ground & who to believe. But I did see the genocidal speech targeting them on social media, particularly from Eritreans, in Tigrinya.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/21...

Effective moderation requires linguistic, political, and legal expertise but platforms often rely on inadequate AI and uninformed vulnerable moderators. Read the paper here to find out how can we improve and the way forward.