In April 2023, I took part in the 12 hours Unicorns in Tech Hackaton. Surrounded by people with the same aim of making the LGBTQ+ community safer, we gathered in groups to find digital solutions to help raise awarness and safety. The violence against LGBTQ+ is on the rise, but this is based on numbers that aren’t complete: only a fraction of crimes or discriminations are reported (to the police or NGO’s).
Our team wanted to bring more safety to the community. We thought that one way would be to target one thing that is used to commit crimes: dating apps. We have seen crimes happened to gay people going on a date, that ended up being a trap. As it can be read on the headlines, apps aren’t safe and is still one tool often used by the LGBT community to meet new people.
We came up with a feature that would be available accross all platforms via a single email. The system would be secured as any security issue could be a matter of life or death for some users.
The feature is a « verified » smybol next to the user name. The innovative part is that you don’t pay to have it, but you are endorsed by other peer(s). If the user appears to be a threat, there is the possibility to withdraw your endorsement.
For example, the person goes to a date or a LGBT+ event or NGO and gets the invitation from one registered and verified user. The more you are « verified », the safer it is for all. You first get a gray icon to show that you are queer. You need 2 more people to endorse you to make this icon turn lilac. We thought about a higher number but we were thinking that it might be difficult for LGBT people living in more remote areas. The question will also be: how do we start the process. Well, we would start with the people in our team and entourage and over time, the « network » will expend.
Our project got won the 2nd position during the UITHackaton:
We are planning now to work more on this project in the near future.