This week we hosted our second annual Initiate: Tech Meet-Up and Hackathon in Seattle, Washington, at the AWS Skills Center. The Tech Coalition brought together over 30 engineers representing 13 member companies and our partner, Thorn, for two days of collaborative working sessions to brainstorm and identify our next technical advances to combating online child sexual abuse and exploitation (OCSEA).
In this setting, our members from different companies align their efforts and work together in order to keep young people safe online, exploring where one company’s latest successes and learnings improve and advance the work of many companies. Throughout the event, we provided time for experts working on similar problems at their respective companies to exchange ideas, tools, and processes. We then moved into breakout sessions aimed at coding and developing novel ideas to combat OCSEA across industry.
"We were pleased to host this collaboration to strengthen online child safety, and we look forward to continuing our work with other members of the Tech Coalition on this very important challenge," said Kristine Dorrain, Senior Corporate Counsel at Amazon.
As we gathered with technical and child safety experts from our member companies, we were reminded that no one role, department, or company can combat online child sexual abuse alone. By acting together, tech companies can significantly reduce the ability of predators to harm children online and stay on top of the threat as it continues to evolve.
The sharing of information and knowledge between member companies is the bedrock of the Tech Coalition. While we stay connected and collaborating on solutions throughout the year remotely, time in-person with our members’ engineering and trust safety teams is always a vital opportunity to brainstorm and design for what we achieve next. We are grateful to our host, Amazon, for this week’s convening and to our members for joining us and advancing our collective work.