ASK A MENTOR! with Savannah Badalich, Policy Director at Discord

Notes on ASK A MENTOR! with Savannah Badalich

Notes by Andrew McAdams

Tell us about yourself: 

• Use She/her pronouns 

• Discord - a communication service that allows your to interact with friends across communities and services 

• As policy director

  • Platform policy - what types of content and behavior are/not allowed on the platform like hate speech, harm, cyberthreats 

  • Product Policy - how should the policy behave? Work with PMs to hammer out issues before they go out

    • “Safety by Design” 

  • ‘External Policy’ - working with Gov’t, how to protect people in locality, and responding to gov’t policies 

• David: These are HUGE areas - and very challenging and contentious area right now with Free speech 

• SB: Remembering that policies are not “one size fits all,” - for example slurs are sometimes reclaimed by those communities and how do they use those terms 

• About SB - had first computer at 9, and was a big Anime and Harry Potter fan; explored the internet to find like-minded folks 

  • Didn’t realize she was queer at the time, but internet was helping with her identity 

  • In college - working on Gender based violence 

    • Realizing that College is a privileged space, the US is a privileged place 

  • After college, worked on non-profit on gender-based violence -- undergrad - Gender Studies and Global Studies, and Masters 

    • Did a lot of advocacy with people who are now involved cyberwarfare and became very interested in how Tech can be weaponized

    • Being a vocal speaker on the internet, experienced doxing and harassment 

    • Got a lot of exposure to how MRA were weaponizing tech, and watching this lead to radicalization into White Supremacy 

      • And did some research into how women were radicalized into White Supremacy 

  • Worked at Civic Hall as Director of Education (incubator for tech for the public good) 

  • Then, wanted to work for a tech company and then switched over to applying for tech company 

    • Applied to dozens of roles, and got recruiter feedback to work more with products and started with Twitter as Product Trust Partner -- worked on Recommendation features on how people could be radicalized through recommendation 

    • David - Was this around the same time as the YouTube recc? \

      • SB: Yes, it was right around the same time as I started here 

        • My biggest strength has been community and advocacy - -really hard to teach those skills 

        • Was at Twitter for 2 years, and moved to Discord in 2017

• David: Looking at your background, what’s the role of pseudo-anonymity 

  • Was super important as for her identity, and Discord does this with custom nicknames per-server 

• David: How did you know? What led you? 

  • SB: Leading to tech, working in non-profit in gender-based violence; I know a lot about gender-based violence and wanted to work more on tech 

  • Second big leap was Twitter - Twitter was hard; I had 50 jobs I had applied to; but I was dogged. Tweak your resume to the job 

    • Know the platform - if you know how that platform works, you know how those particular problems will manifest 

• David: For your time at Twitter, Jack Dorsey would have hired a Game Theorist. How can someone like a social worker get into tech? How to get “seen” more 

  • SB: The platform is a microcosm of the bigger society, but now the platform is part of the macrocosm. There’s been some chat lately about content moderation being like a “police department” and don’t think this is a fair way to characterize 

    • I.e. When talking about violence in the community, you are not only going to have punitive people, but also educators, and mental health. What’s the larger context? 

  • Greatly admire - thesis Advisor - Dr. Desmond Patton - he leads “Safe Lab” - applies social work concepts to social work listening to social media 

  • Also does a lot with social media ethics - he’s a really great example of someone who’s used a lot of non-traditional background into tech 

  • David: Do you think that this showcases a lot of difficulty in these spaces? 

    • This is really touchy subject, i.e. assumptions about self-harm; you might actually trigger someone you are trying to help 

• Question: What made you want to move from large Tech instead of staying in Nonprofit? 

  • SB: When doing research on MRA to radicalization to White Supremacy and was looking at reddit, twitter, etc to see the recommendations that are contributors, but wasn’t sure what to do other than email her thesis to those companies. Wanted to change her advocacy, and wanted to push from change from within 

    • It’s really a personal decision 

  • When talking about wanting to leave, when joining Twitter was looking at either a tech role in a human rights organization, or a human right role in a tech organization and thought she might go back into the Public sector, but feels she’s making a strong impact now. 

• Question: Within the tech industry, there’s a strong divide between the “fuzzy” and the “techie” - did you find that you were disadvantaged or looked at differently without the CS degree from Stanford

  • SB: I experienced a bit, but I went to my technical partners and said “my area of expertise, help me understand…” People who were super focused on their product and their metrics, it was a little harder to cross that divide. Really focus on building a relationship, and being curious. There’s so many new systems at other tech companies, you’re going to need to learn it all over again 

• Question: Where did you see the biggest pushback from your approach of taking a more humanistic approach to the world of tech? Do they see you as an impediment to innovation

  • SB: The biggest pushback, structurally, is constraints in the product, systems, to fix issues. Other folks, the products have been working a certain way for a long time, why does it need to change? Or new product and need to ship it really fast for metrics. Typically brought in Trust and Safety late in the process and required rebuild. Asked to be part of it early - I won’t slow you down if you can bring me in early. 

  • David: ‘Ethics Washing’ 

  • SB: Trust and safety as the “janitors” of the product, and clean up issues and now seeing a push towards Responsible Innovation, Product Trust, and Product Policy 

• Question: You mentioned how difficult it was getting into tech companies, can you share some lessons you’ve learned?

  • SB: Sent out “generic resume” - highly recommend _not_ doing that. Write your resume in a way that speaks to the skills written in the job description. Even non-profits are using resume review algorithms to look for keywords to bring those resumes to the top. At the last, give a summary at the top of your resume for keyword picking. 

  • You’ll have better luck to be referred to at least a phone screen. Don’t advise doing this if it's someone you don’t know or you don’t have a good relationship. Instead approach it a little more humbly. 

  • If you can get ahold of a recruiter, go that path 

• Question: What about if you are already in tech? (my question) 

  • SB: If you can bring that perspective to your team, that’s where you’ll have the most impact. Doing audits, retros on the impact of the features, and you’ll have something you can use to pivot. It’s easier to frame right now the need for those roles, whether a ML researcher for assessment and advocacy

    • Some of the first projects - had to advocate for it to put on the roadmap and because you had that line item, it was easier to point back to that. Find the advocates 

• Question: Which companies have you found to be “woke” and embrace the non-technologists vs. having an ATS immediately disqualify candidates who don’t possess a tech pedigree? 

  • SB: Love the way the question was asked. You have to choose what kind of company you want to work in -- if you want to work at a company that is more open. Companies like Twitch / Pinterest have a lot more power and influence to put forth ideas. They have an interest in making it as accessible to as many people as possible. Twitter has a strong department, Roblox, Reddit -- how they talk about safety and the tradeoffs; Beyond social media, a different tech company into the ethics / compliance/ trust and safety

• Question: What is the next step to get a job like yours? 

  • SB: IF you aren’t comfortable with the tech, do some research on how to do product management - it’s not super technical but will give you the knowledge to talk to the technical staff; Work with non-profits. Two sites: Trust and Safety Professional Association; Platformabuse.org - to start to understand policy 

Stay in touch! 

You can stay in touch with Savannah Badalich here. 

Trust & Safety Professional Association 

PlatformAbuse.org