Norman Shamas

Norman Shamas is a security and privacy harm reduction specialist. They work with activists and marginalized folx globally, in particular sex workers, queer, trans*, and gender nonconforming communities. Norman works as an independent consultant and is a member of Open Privacy's board of directors.

Presenting

Looking at the Margins: Incorporating Harm Reduction Into Tech

By and large, tech is failing marginalized communities. But these issues aren't unique to the tech sector and are reflections of how society stigmatizes marginalized communities and activities they engage in. By shifting focus and prioritizing communities typically at the margins, we can reimagine radical futures with tech.

One of the most impactful shifts we can make is to start incorporating harm reduction into tech and system design. Harm reduction is a philosophy of survival and self-determination that comes from the struggles of queer and trans BIPOC, drug users, and sex workers.

This talk will focus on introducing the idea of harm reduction and looking at some of the barriers to building it into software/platforms and tech systems. We will look at two primary examples: queer dating apps and FOSTA-SESTA/tech impact on sex workers.