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)
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.)
Would love to see literally anyone explain how getting teenagers to counsel each other and giving up their sensitive health information in perpetuity is (a) a good idea and (b) legal?
I was wondering if they were serious about the partnership with tumblr, and it’s real: here’s the staff post confirming the partnership from back in November 2021. The articles about koko’s unethical experimentation with ChatGPT dropped back in January of 2023, but just connecting distressed children to each other doesn’t seem to garner the same outrage.
This article from The Verge was written back in 2017, before AirBNB stepped in to fund Koko, and it’s an interesting look at Koko’s development from some random guy’s thesis project to the kind of group that can test ChatGPT therapy on thousands of unsupervised teenagers:
It seems like the guy running Koko genuinely wants to help other people get help, not just make money (or even make money at all) yet also it seems like he is what one might consider a “mad scientist but for the humanities”: he’s so obsessed with his vision of a better world that he doesn’t much seem to care how dangerous his methods are or who he’s going to hurt along the way.
Boring people the second they see something a little creative,silly,experimental,or even just a little confussing: UHMM…⁉️ WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH 😂 WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂🤣😂😭🤣😂🤣😂🤣🤣😂🤣😂😭😭🤣😂😭😂
that post that’s like “okay but she did utilise girl power what happened to supporting women’s wrongs” annoyed the fuck out of me when it was doing the rounds on here bc the original joke made by eric andre was about MARGARET THATCHER
the joke was intended to undermine that kind of wishy-washy popculture white feminism that leads to people uncritically supporting any woman in power to the point of praising and idolising war criminals and colonisers. the original joke goes “did she effectively utilise girl power when she funded illegal paramilitary death troops in northern ireland”. it wasn’t a fandom joke!
For those who don’t know, r/place is where you can place one single pixel on a huge canvas–and are then locked out of placing another pixel for a long while. The amount of collaboration necessary to successfully do this is incredible.
I must confess that reluctance to use art supplies is still a thing I have trouble with sometimes. I have some books I made in bookbinding class in college that are still empty after 8 years, and I can’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve touched any of my nice watercolour paper.
But I’m trying to be better at putting scribbly crap in my new pretty teal 5 dollar sketchbook, and am succeeding so far! I’ve just filled a page with scratchy awful dandelions and I’m not going to show them to you!
Update: I have done a second page of dandelion doodles and you can’t see those ones either. Heeheehoohoo.
Update: 3 pages of dandelions. Still not posting them, for the same reason theatres don’t sell tickets to rehearsals and television stations don’t air the first script reads! it’s not what they’re for!!
Page 4 now, and this dandelion is so much nicer! So I am posting it. It’s an art nouveau dandelion because I was looking at a lot of art nouveau embroideries on pinterest yesterday.
The crucial thing is that this dandelion owes its niceness entirely to the mess on the preceding 3 pages.
(Normally I keep this blog strictly for silly dinosaurs, and post all my other work on @vincentbriggs, but this time it’s directly related to the use-the-sketchbook dinosaur from a couple days ago.)
[Image ID: a tweet from Animation Guild Writers (@TAGwriters) from July 19th, 2023 that reads:
Awesome news! Warner Bros. and Cartoon Network production workers have organized to join TAG! Welcome to these heroes! Let’s celebrate! #ProductionStrong @animationguild
A long with it is an animated picture with a pink IATSE shield up in the left hand corner, a yellow spring in the top right corner, and it read PRO STRONG. There are several arms of animated characters raised with a fist. Just the arms. Each one is from a recognizable character, including Jake the Dog and I believe Jonny Bravo. Other people might be able to identify the other ones.
/End ID]
TAG’s contract is up in 2024. If you’re showing up for the WGA strike and the SAG-AFTRA strike, please remember to show up for them too. They’re a tiny guild, they’ll probably be striking, and they’ll need all the help they can get!
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