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!eview 85 In 2017, MIT Technology Review honored Tracy Chou as one of our 35 Innovators Under 35. At the time, Chou was working to expose Silicon Valley’s diversity issues. As an engi! neer at Pinterest, she’d published a widely circulated blog post calling for tech companies to share data on how many women worked on their engineering teams. She collected their responses in a public database that revealed how homogeneous many technical teams at top companies still were. About a year later, Chou started a company called Block Party that targets online harassment by giv! ing Twitter users more control over which tweets appear in their feed and mentions. The service signed up its first paying customers in January. With her new company, Chou wants to fix some of the problems she’s experienced firsthand in the tech industry"including the sort of online harassment of which she has been a target. Here, we check in with Chou, who is based in San Francisco, to learn more about what it takes to make change in the tech sector and what entrepreneurs like her are up against. hen we last spoke, I THE W had just left Pinterest. I’ve always been drawn to smaller companies: I joined WUDAN YAN Pinterest when it had about 10 employees and left when it had about 1,000. It felt like time for me !oadblocks to move on and do something new. I’ve worked for so many startups An entrepreneur shares what happened when she set and have come to recognize some of out to try to solve some of the problems she experienced the structural issues around start! firsthand in the tech industry. ups and funding and how those factors influence what problems get solved. A lot of founders natu! rally work on problems that directly affect them: it’s easier to know ANDREA DAQUINO ANDREA JA21_Reviews.indd 85 6/9/21 11:18 AM 86 Change ROADBLOCKS what’s important or what could phone line that I shared with my people are at the bottom, because be improved by technology. family. I was also on some of the that could very likely be you if you In thinking about my next blogging platforms, like Xanga and were born as anybody tomorrow. steps, I thought about products LiveJournal. They were nice outlets You’d want to design a much more I’ve worked on and checked that at the time. equal world. That got me thinking against questions like, Do I care Pretty early on, though, some! I didn’t like that the world was so about this? Is there something to be Tracy Chou on one set up an anonymous Xanga unequal and so many people were made that can be commercially via! the cover of our page dedicated to hating me. I much less lucky than me. 35 Innovators ble? There are lots of really import! Under 35 issue think it was someone from school, That feeling has made me take ant issues that will not be solved in 2017. because it referenced things from the privilege that I have and pay it naturally through a startup. high school. A lot of it was hat! forward to make the world a little I ended up on Block Party, ing on me because I did well aca! more just. I went to Stanford; I’ve which pulls together a few differ! demically. It didn’t bother me as worked at companies that people ent threads from my background. much at the time as it did when I within tech find credible. So I can I’ve worked as an engineer at vari! got older and looked back on it. try to amplify more voices or dif! ous social platform companies, and Back then, I thought this person ferent perspectives. I’ve worked on monitoring, moder! was just insecure and jealous. I When I decided to pursue Block ating, and increasing the quality of thought it was a bit sad and messed Party, I did a bit of research and content, and figuring out how prod! up that someone would write full talked to others who have worked uct design influences community posts dedicated to trying to take in anti!harassment, and to people behavior. Not only did I build mod! me down. who were building solutions, to eration tools at Quora that reviewed I didn’t report it. Who would I understand what the market was content quality, but I also took puni! have reported it to? It didn’t even like. Not a lot of companies under! tive actions against people who cross my mind to go to my school stood the true user experience of violated the site’s policies. and report it. And I didn’t neces! dealing with harassment"it felt I’d also spent a lot of time look! sarily want my teachers or school like many people were approach! ing at how the lack of diversity and administrators to see the page ing this problem purely from a representation in teams meant that either, since it was pretty hateful business angle, because they didn’t products were built in a skewed content. know what it was like to experience way. For instance, nondiverse teams My parents didn’t raise me to it themselves. Some people were of people who generally don’t get be someone who was outspoken building machine!learning models targeted with abuse and harass! and challenged the status quo. I to detect toxic content and thought ment don’t tend to build protections definitely wasn’t encouraged to that would solve the problem. against that in their apps. speak up against the system in As someone who deals with The last part of my background any way. Like many other children this, I understand the emotional that led me to Block Party was of Asian immigrants to the US, I impact much more. There are just getting targeted more with grew up believing that this is not certain things that are emotion! harassment. Over the last year, I’ve my country, and my parents and I ally distressing to read even if definitely gotten more anti!Asian are here trying to find opportuni! they’re unlikely to be flagged by harassment online. Some of it was ties for ourselves. We didn’t have an algorithm. For example, I once truly targeted at me by individuals, a safety net. I grew up more with received a long message from a and other times I would attract a head!down mentality of do good man which essentially said, “You trolls just by having a presence work, work hard, and try to make it. should smile more and then you’ll online. My dad, who’s an engineer, gave be more attractive.” I got online very young, and at me a philosophical thought exper! That message bothered me first the internet was a fun way iment when I was quite young: If for a few weeks before I realized to connect with friends. I was on you could be reborn as anybody in how gaslighty and inappropri! AOL Instant Messenger, which the world tomorrow, how would ate it was. The impact was very was a better way to chat with my you design the world today? You emotional, and the meaning of friends in high school: I didn’t have wouldn’t want to design a world the message"not to mention the a cell phone, and I couldn’t hog the that’s vastly unequal, where most anti!feminist and regressive point JA21_Reviews.indd 86 6/9/21 11:18 AM !eview 87 of view within!goes deeper than After YC rejected me, I raised inbox was overflowing with harass" what would be picked up by any WITHIN 10 some follow"on funding to extend ment. It was ironic that if I build algorithms. OR 15 MINUTES my pre"seed funding, about $1.5 anti"harassment software, I just get My challenges in getting fund" OF THE AMA million. That might feel like a good harassed for it. ing for Block Party started when I chunk of money in some markets, I have a stalker!an online applied to be in the winter 2020 STARTING, but it’s not enough to hire engi" harasser who has moved into real" class for Y Combinator, an accel" TROLLS neers, which means I had to be a lot world stalking!which made me erator dedicated to funding early" TOOK OVER more creative with how I built the more fearful. I wondered, will stage startups. In Silicon Valley, if product!I had to build it myself. these trolls dox me or do some" you’re looking for a credential, Y THE THREAD, There’s no chance Block Party thing worse? When I’ve gone to Combinator is one of the better PRESENTING would have even gotten to where file police reports on my stalker, ones you can get. I applied, iron" BAD-FAITH it is now if I were not myself a very I’ve felt gaslit. The police make ically, because I anticipated that strong engineer. notes like “Victim believes suspect YC!which is made up of mostly ARGUMENTS Last summer, as part of Mozilla’s is obsessed with her,” which under" white men who wouldn’t neces" AND BURYING Fix the Internet incubator, I was cuts the truth: I get thousands of sarily understand the problems I ALL MY asked to do a Reddit AMA in an tweets from this person. He would wanted to take on!would be very effort to grow Block Party.