Behind the scenes

Hackers on a mission

11.11.2022

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Pictures: Michael Sommerhalder

«Hacking for Humanity» wasn’t your average hackathon: coding wasn’t the main focus. It was much more about bringing women from the tech industry together. Digitec Galaxus also shares this ambition, which is why we too participated in the challenge.

A Friday evening in October. Around 50 hackers got together to kick off «Hacking for Humanity». Unlike traditional programming competitions, the majority of participants were women, tinkering with ideas, writing notes and organising role-playing games. Bringing together women from the tech world. That was the main goal set by «Girls in Tech», who organised the hackathon. Digitec Galaxus supports this vision, which is why we got involved.

The hackathon’s main focus was to encourage the exchange of ideas between its mostly female participants.

This exchange among participants took up a lot of time: «At «Role Model Talks», women from the tech industry spoke about their careers and shared their experiences with other participants. It was a nice opportunity to tell your own life story and exchange ideas with like-minded people,» says Natalie Bausch, Engineering Team Leader at Digitec Galaxus. Natalie didn’t just talk about her career, she was also one of the judges involved in evaluating various hackers’ ideas.

Natalie Bausch speaking about her experiences.

The community as a safe place for all

The heart of every hackathon – challenges – was, of course, also present at «Hacking for Humanity». Tech companies Meta and Esri provided one task each. The third challenge came from Digitec Galaxus. Teams that chose us dealt with the culture surrounding discussion in our online stores. Our Community exchanges product information, discusses articles from our editorial team and answers questions posed by other users. The basis for all this is our Community Guidelines – our house rules, facilitating fair and constructive conversation. Sometimes, this doesn’t quite work out. There’s the odd derogatory comment and insult. What contribution can software developers make to prevent such behaviour? The Digitec Galaxus Challenge crews tackled precisely this question. Their goal: creating a comfortable space for discourse on Digitec and Galaxus.

Post-its instead of code

After an initial brainstorming session on Friday, the four teams got to work on Saturday morning, at eight o’clock sharp. The next twelve hours were dedicated to creating a peaceful online community. Many diverse ideas were proposed, from every corner. There were few experienced developers at the hackathon, but most participants came from other fields such as user experience design or were complete newcomers to the tech sector. The crews didn’t present a single line of code, instead using visualisations on the figma software platform or – quite simply – writing on Post-its.

The four women from the «Troll Busters» team proposed a rewards system. Their idea was to reward constructive behaviour, empathy and community engagement with awards and Digicoins. They also suggested using artificial intelligence to prevent hateful comments. This figma site contains the Troll Busters’ proposal.

The «Digi-Safe» team also opted for prevention measures against hate speech, but chose a different approach. These four ladies strived to improve community guidelines and make them more visible. As soon as a user joins any discussion and writes a comment, they’re reminded of the Community Guidelines at various points. If the comment violates any guidelines, it won’t be displayed at all. If the user doesn’t agree with the automated assessment, they can have the comment reviewed. Check out this figma site to see how this might work.

Algorithms are the way forward, at least according to the «Guardians of the Galaxus» team. These three women want to feed the algorithm, with both negative and positive comments from the Community. The result? If a user enters an offensive comment, the bot recognises this immediately and prevents them from publishing. The bot will then explain to the user why their comment violates Community guidelines and gives them the opportunity to make adjustments.

Preventing insults instead of just reacting

Team «Fair Galaxians» proposed a rewards system for reporting offensive comments. In addition, they believe that personalised profiles should be required so that users can’t hide behind an anonymous account. Furthermore, automated bots will suggest more positive answers. Natalie Bausch, who sat on the jury for Digitec Galaxus during «Hacking for Humanity», is convinced by this solution: «The team doesn’t just want to react to inappropriate behaviour in the Community, but prevent it. For me, this is the right approach.» The decision wasn’t easy for Natalie. «All four solutions have interesting aspects. It’d be cool if we could merge all these functions,» says Natalie.

The Fair Galaxians team presenting their solution.

The winning team, Fair Galaxians, didn’t just win 500 francs in prize money, but can also look forward to a visit to the Digitec Galaxus office. And maybe, just maybe, these four women will inspire our engineering teams for a future feature.

What do you make of these hackers? Should we use their ideas to prevent hate comments in our Community or do we need further measures? Let us know in the comments.

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Norina Brun

Senior Communications Manager

norina.brun@digitecgalaxus.ch

News aren’t enough for me – it’s the stories behind the news that capture my interest. Curiosity is my constant companion and the reason why I spend Saturday afternoons in my favourite café, eavesdropping on city stories while planning my next travel adventure and creating new event ideas. Zen meditation can wait.

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Hackers on a mission

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Preventing insults instead of just reacting

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