Right now, privacy and security have never been more important –but so has delight and social interactions. Zoom has reported security flaws, such as leaking data to Facebook and having an ability for hackers to take over, to the rise of Zoombombing harassment (where harassers can share their screen and say or create obscene content). But Zoom has a lot of popularity: it allows for a 100 people to join a video hang out at once, it allows for break out rooms (that allow for smaller, group intimacy) and it’s been used widely in the enterprise, business space.

Which brings us to this question, during COVID19, what do you users need to have safe and joyful experiences? What does a karaoke or online dance party need? What would these platforms and tools need to create intimacy and delight, but also safety? What are their harassment mitigation techniques? What are the granular moderation controls? Who is doing what well? And what could brand new apps look like?

This presentation is based on a series of best practices and research funded by Omidyar Network that is focused on the right now – how society needs social interactions to sustain ourselves and our communities, but safe, social interactions. How can we shift the design where people need to converse, and talk over each other, but the conversation needs to be intelligible and intimate? This is what this project would look at. I've looked at apps like Houseparty, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Rec Room, Instagram Live, Jitsi, Netflix’s Party App, Mozilla Hub, YouTube live and others – but through the context of large group, social hang outs. And I've interviewed community managers, design strategists, policy researchers, security researchers and community organizers on what people want right now from these tools and how to securely build these. This is a talk about the right now – how to design for this moment to foster safety, intimacy and even delight.