The picture is taken from the perspective of someone standing in the center of a blue and white circus tent, where the stripes meet at the peak

In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark decision: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization found that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. With the advent of new laws that would make accessing abortions illegal in some parts of the US, advocacy groups began recommending the use of messaging apps that promise end-to-end encryption. These apps, such as Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp, all promise (and sometimes provide) varying degrees of privacy protection. However, their use presents a challenging safety issue: the same privacy protections that allow pregnant people to exercise bodily autonomy also enable disinformation campaigns (for example, in Brazil and India) that empower far right extremists, and child welfare organizations argue that encryption puts children at risk. However, content moderation systems that address these issues also compromise privacy. 

In this NSF funded project, we explore this tension from the perspective of people who use encrypted privacy apps (and who are rarely heard from in discussions of content moderation and privacy). To this end, we have developed a survey in both Spanish and English that offers end-to-end encryption and encryption and that asks participants to respond to six open ended questions about their experiences using apps that promise end to end encryption, and their views on privacy and content moderation. In this Big Tent meeting, our team (Amanda Vilchez, Alexandra Gonzales, and Sarah Gilbert) will share our decision-making processes when building the survey and recruiting participants, and initial trends we’re observing in the results. We’re hoping to get some reflections from the group about how our recruitment might be impacting our findings, and solicit ideas for broadening participation.