The Yellow Vest movement in France started in part through Facebook groups and Facebook Live’s call-to-actions against inequality. Many used Facebook Live to document key moments, such as police confrontations. Which enabled groups to organize watch parties with other members, which would circulate the videos quickly beyond the groups. However, many of the videos where unsourced creating the  potential to spread an incomplete picture and creating the ripe conditions to facilitate manipulation by various political interests. The Yellow Vest movement then became an umbrella for all issues: “US President Donald Trump retweeted a fake video of the protests and linked them to economic anger as a result of the 2015 global climate change agreement he pulled out of last year. The tweet claimed the Yellow Vests were chanting “We want Trump!”, which was completely untrue.”

Read more: As The Yellow Vests Torched Cars In Paris, Millions Watched At Home On Facebook Live

The movement itself had a lot of factions with different political leanings. Beyond the dangers of uncontextualized Facebook Live videos that can be exploited for each of the group’s agendas, Facebook Live was also used as a coordination tool for organizing without concern for the activists’ safety while confronting the police (as well as without taking non-participant’s safety into consideration). Instant information, like a Facebook Live video can be interpreted wrongly immediately, leading to actions based on false information.

Within Mobil-Eyes Us, we know that one live stream cannot be taken to represent an account wholly by itself and that we need more background information to understand it. Our recommendation is to tie the streams from a particular issue together so we create a more comprehensive narrative of what is happening.

US politicians using Instagram Live to connect with voters in a more direct way and in an effort to appear more authentic.

Read more: Instant Pot Politics

As seen in our Rio goes live case study, politicians try to leverage social media and bypass official channels to get their message straight to their supporters and engage with them in real time. The problem lies in allowing politicians a platform that can amplify propaganda that then become difficult to challenge.

This issue highlights the important of the Mobil-Eyes Us methodology where distant witnesses participation in providing context to the event seen in the live stream allows them to learn more critically about the issue they are engaging with.

Police shooting of Philando Castile livestreamed by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and other examples of the impact of livestreams in 2016.

Read more: Experts Weigh In on Video of Philando Castile Shooting

What Facebook Live means for journalism

5 Facebook Live streams that defined the news in 2016

Though the officer that shot Castile was acquitted, would he have ever even been taken to court without Diamond Reynolds live streaming the incident? Like other forms of visual content, a live stream becomes evidence.

But there ethical dilemmas to consider as well: exposing people watching to sensitive and graphic content, voyeurism and desensitization.

What MEU would offer is the ability to quickly gather an audience to put pressure on authorities when they are being livestreamed, spreading the stream to even more people, and providing support to those filming if possible.

Livestreams gave visibility to the protests in Ferguson after Michael Brown was killed by police.

Read more: Is Livestreaming the Future of Media, or the Future of Activism?

See also: The rise of Iran’s citizen journalists

How live video on Periscope helped ‘get inside’ the Syrian refugees story

For protestors, livestreams offered an alternative to regular media coverage and helped spread their message. But also, crucially, it made them feel safer knowing that many viewers were there. Livestreamers “provide a way for people to watch us and protect us”.

MEU wants to multiply the potential that livestreams have to give visibility and safety to human rights defenders, but also the expand the opportunities for people taking in the events remotely to become more active supporters to their cause.

Livestreaming as a way to earn a living: In China, fans of livestreamers can give them virtual gifts that can be cashed out. Some of these streamers earn more than a normal entry-level day job. Brands also use this platform to connect directly with consumers. However, government has set policies that limit political content through livestreams. The policies require “content providers to obtain qualifications and set rules on monitoring user data” and “platforms will have to collaborate with regulators to provide information about users who stream content that the government considers threatening to national security of social order.”

Read more: China’s live-streaming explosion: a game changer for all?

There’s the issue of a unregulated market of livestreamers, which becomes another industry replicating exploitative labor practices in China. But the most obvious human rights issue is the continuation of Chinese censorship and control into spaces that are spontaneous. How will they punish someone that films an event in good faith that then goes unexpected? Livestreams become just pre-scripted broadcasts in contained settings to avoid such risks.

Besides the inability to legally implement the initiative in China, MEU can learn from the transactional nature of the livestreamers and their fans. Though we would discourage a commercial relationship between participants, we could reproduce the concept of the virtual gift as a way to take action. Instead of giving context or translating, can distant witnesses also give a virtual gift that can either be actual donations, but could also be another mean to show support or solidarity?

DeRay Mckesson, a Black Lives Matter activist, was arrested while livestreaming a protest on Periscope in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 2016. The charges were for obstruction, but he was later released.

Read more: Black Lives Matter leader DeRay Mckesson released after being held in Baton Rouge on a night of tension and protests

See also: How could states’ wiretapping laws affect your right to film law enforcement?

Even if the charges were eventually dropped, arresting someone because of livestreaming (even if they used another charge as an excuse) goes against our right to record. More so in Louisiana, which is a one-party state. The arrest serves as a deterrent so a livestreamer thinks twice before filming the police, becoming another way of censorship.

Cases like these fomented our initiative. If activists have real time virtual support as they are filming and authorities try to stop them, now the script is flipped and the authorities are now thinking twice before escalating knowing that they are being watched by many.

On April 2018, journalist Ángel Gahona in Nicaragua used Facebook Live to cover the aftermath of a protest against President Daniel Ortega and was shot and killed while doing so.

Read more: How a journalist’s death live on air became a symbol of Nicaragua’s crisis

Family and friends of Gahona believe police shot him taking advantage of the chaos. Police and authorities can practice different intimidation tactics to suppress freedom of the press: by legalizing the repression, by arresting people filming to discourage them from doing so again, and by killing journalists to send a message to others and outright stop behavior they see as threatening.

We would want to believe that having remote observers while a livestream is happening will deter violence to the extent to stop someone getting shot. However, the shot in this case seemed to be out of frame of the camera. Yet when violence, abuse or any crime is documented on video, it can serve as evidence that can be strengthen by being linked with other possible videos being filmed at the moment to reconstruct a scene of how the incident took place, or with videos of similar incidents and then show the wider patterns of abuse that exist. A livestream, like any video, can be a piece of data of a narrative arc telling a larger story.

A coordinated attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that killed around 50 people was livestreamed by the attacker as it was being carried out.

Read more: The mass shooting in New Zealand was designed to spread on social media

Facebook reviews live stream policy after Christchurch attack

The use of livestreaming and social media can amplify essential social and human rights issues, and more importantly, from those who are affected by these issues directly. However, as seen with the Christchurch attack, it can also be used by the perpetrators themselves to spread their message of hate, disrespectful for the victims and expose viewers to trauma. Like with disinformation and other forms of propaganda, media platforms have to be careful about giving these messages oxygen while also not burying them completely so we cannot see the effects they have on the people that are being targeted.

The MEU initiative works alongside frontline partners to share their stories directly and connect to a wider community and extend their solidarity network. We build a strong relationship with them and we work around their goals. The initiative started within social media platforms themselves because these are the spaces where our partners work in. But Facebook Live not only allows anyone to stream, but also to comment or troll and harass our partners. When we built the app, it was to streamline the process we already had used on these platforms, but it was also to create a designated safe space where our frontline partners could communicate and connect straight with those who want to support them.

Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab’s DeepStream is a tool to “increase participation” by allowing people to easily add relevant information (articles, social media, etc) to a live stream, and other media happening in real time.

Read more: DeepStream

Deep Stream is used predominantly on civic events and to get people involved “in a way that emphasizes local perspectives and deeper engagement”.

The Mobil-Eyes Us initiative used DeepStream to provide context to live streams, as one of the principal ways that distant witnesses could help frontline witnesses. Lessons with the platform would be incorporated within the MEU app itself.

Technical instructions on how to use Vimeo to live stream a 3D hologram through your browser or VR headset.

Read more: How Vimeo can power live streaming holograms

The technology is becoming more accessible, which means more people can document their everyday life using this tool, including constant inhumane conditions they face under repressive state control, or specific incidents of human rights abuse.

MEU wants to immerse viewers into a scene shared by human rights defenders not just to passively observe, but also to participate with relevant impactful actions while doing so. Can we use this technology in reverse and have each distant witness capture their 3D selves and find a way to project each of us on the ground by one of those human rights defenders? Will that serve as a deterrent to prevent abuse when authorities know that there many people around the world watching?

Instagram Stories allows viewers to ask questions and lets the streamer control which question to answer at a particular moment, which shows up in everyone’s screen.

Read more: Instagram Stories’ question stickers can now be used to share music

Allowing people who are streaming more control of the interactions they are having.

While giving context, we are providing context options that distant witnesses can choose from to streamline the process. Like Instagram Stories, people can ask questions to the streamers, but would be useful to also show what question the streamer chose to answer. We do have a way for frontline witnesses to take control and the “direct traffic” of participation, by sending messages to the distant witnesses according to their roles and depending on the needs they have at the moment.

CrowdVoice lets you submit information (reports, social media, etc) on particular social movement or human rights issues to give them more context, which can then be visualized with infographics that have been curated.

Read more: CrowdVoice

The platform is specifically created to curate and enrich social justice and human rights issues with related information to amplify them further.

MEU echoes what CrowdVoice does through our contextualizing process dedicated for each livestream and to connect the context from each stream to get the bigger picture of a particular issue. We have used CrowdVoice as an independent tool to facilitate the MEU workflow before we had incorporated the process within the app itself, and still recommend using it if you want to reproduce the methodology without using the app.

LinkedIn are continuing the social network trend and launching a live video tool for its users to connect with select groups and target audiences or publicly to all LinkedIn users.

Read more: LinkedIn debuts LinkedIn Live, a new live video broadcast service

As in the Instagram Live case, this is just another tool that human rights defenders can use to tell their stories and reach more audiences, even if the social network is specifically for work related purposes.

If appropriate and when they release LinkedIn Live publicly, it becomes another platform available to apply the Mobil-Eyes Us workflow.

ACLU of Texas created the MigraCam app so that targeted immigrant communities can live stream and document their possible detention to a pre-set list of friends and family, while also sharing up-to-date information about their location to those contacts.

Read more: MigraCam

The real-time documentation of potential inhumane treatment and abuse can create pressure for law enforcement to step back and reconsider their actions, while can also be used as a legal case in court.

Mobil-Eyes Us wants to facilitate real-time rapid responses to quickly mobilize help, as well as documenting the events for advocacy purposes.

Be My Eyes connects blind and low-vision people with volunteers through live video whenever they need visual assistance. The volunteers get alerted if someone needs their help and they can confirm their availability or not. If not, another volunteer will get an alert immediately after.

Read more: Be My Eyes

Be My Eyes shows significant ways you can be co-present digitally to help someone in a simple low-barrier way. The power lays in its simplicity to create immediate impactful human connections around concrete tasks.

Mobil-Eyes Us provides opportunities to be co-present and quickly help with impactful actions designed to build solidarity around the concerns affecting frontline communities. Like Be My Eyes, we use live video as a means to connect and strengthen communities separated by distance.

Waze Carpool tries to connect drivers to riders (who pay a small fee to the driver) who share a similar route.

Uber and Lyft also connects drivers to riders in real time, but more like taxi services.

Go is like Waze but for public transportation. It gives real time information and alerts of the public transportation a rider wants to take, and uses the rider’s geolocation data to improve the accuracy of that information for the users’ benefit.

SpotAngels gives real time alerts about available parking, based on the data from other users’ phone motion sensors. So the more users in the network, the more reliable the data. The team behind the app is planning a “predicted availability” feature allowing “drivers to know what the odds are of finding a spot in any given area before heading there”.

There is a lot of data security issues with these apps, but as seen in other examples, real time data collected in volume can compliment information needed to respond in crisis situations. Also, the matchmaking technology behind some of these apps can help connect people who want to help to those who need in a direct and useful way.

Waze helps drivers circumnavigate traffic jams by allowing each user to submit real-time information that is relevant for those around them. The tasks are easy to do, and others verify them to double-check, and everyone involved benefits from the information. MEU uses task-routing technology so the appropriate type of participation (and the participant with the capacity to undertake it) is called upon during a live stream. And like Waze Carpool, it wants to find the best and most relevant way to connect people together. The data collected and curated, like in some of the other apps, could then be visualized to identify larger patterns.

Good Call connects low-income people who have been arrested with a free lawyer (as well as designated contacts) immediately.

Similar tool: CrowdSource Rescue uses mapping and dispatching tech to connect people who are looking for help in a crisis situation, like a natural disaster, to certified local volunteers.

It is another rapid response system like MigraCam, but it concretely puts you in touch with legal help that you need at that moment, attempting to close the unfairness gap in the current legal system. In the case of CrowdSource Rescue, you connect to people who can help you in an emergency situation.

One of the distant witness roles planned for MEU is that of a legal expert that can give immediate advice corresponding to the questions or concerns that being observed or asked during the livestream.

Ushahidi is a crowd-sourcing platform for real time rapid response mapping. Originally for crisis situations, like a natural disaster, it now has been used for election monitoring and armed conflict. People on the ground send reports, and a team can manage those submissions through in-built tasks such as verifying or translating the posts. The tool can then visualize the data in a map or other ways so that teams can easily respond to what is happening, and which can also be used by other people in the area to monitor the news around them.

Similar tool: The geoBingAn app also lets people submit reports in disaster situations, as well what they need, and then authorities use the data to respond accordingly to the emergency.

As mentioned, the tool has been used within armed conflict situations. Syria Tracker Crisis Map launched soon after the Syrian protests in 2011 to document human rights violations, specifically to preserve and honor fatality victims from the conflict.

Ushahidi inspires a lot of the methodology behind the MEU initiative: real time information collection around a particular issue that might need people to respond and provide help quickly. That information then gets stitched together to provide further context. And though you can submit videos within the Ushahidi platform, MEU focuses on live streams and crowdsources the actions to be taken around the stream to a group of volunteers that care about particular human right issues and have the expertise on certain subject matters.

SERMO uses medical crowdsourcing, allowing doctors to post real cases and get immediate help from other doctors around the world.

Similar tool: Hiyo, an app to get real time anonymous advice from a stranger.

Neighbourly: an app to crowdsource questions to locals about their neighborhoods.

Human rights defenders can adapt the tool for a similar purpose: to virtually collaborate and learn from each other’s different experiences that can then be used for their own work.

“SERMO offers a virtual channel where doctors can quickly collaborate across borders.” MEU strives for the same: to connect frontline witnesses who have asks that need immediate response with distant witnesses that want to collaborate with them in real time.

Ground Truth is one of several platforms that gives on demand real time data through a network of local contributors that carry on certain tasks and get paid to acquire that data. The data is then collated and ready for analysis for the companies who are demanding it.

Also see how spectators can carry out simple tasks to collect soccer data in real time, which then visualizes soccer phases.

For specific human rights issues, it is essential to have local contributors help us understand specific situations on the ground while they are happening (as long as it’s safe!) to either corroborate reports or provide new information. Having reliable information in real time makes you more likely to correctly assess your decision-making in rapid response incidents.

When getting context during a particular livestream, we want distant witnesses with local perspectives to participate since they have more direct, and possibly emotional, experience with the issue at hand and thus a more valuable insight into it.

Ground Truth is one of several platforms that gives on demand real time data through a network of local contributors that carry on certain tasks and get paid to acquire that data. The data is then collated and ready for analysis for the companies who are demanding it.

Also see how spectators can carry out simple tasks to collect soccer data in real time, which then visualizes soccer phases.

Itself Casserole Club lets people perform actions that help others, but this can also be replicated for other humanitarian scenarios. A Casserole Club specifically for incoming refugees in your area? Opening the doors to your house for a temporary stay for someone seeking sanctuary? Meeting over coffee with someone who faces discrimination and listening to them? What other ways can we use digital tools to let us link up in a physical space to create real human connections?

Ideally, MEU wants to create those human connections in real time even if distant and frontline witnesses are not in the same space as each other. However, these interactions could also initiate a solidarity community that might want to meet up in person with each other and those whose live streams they have been learning from.

Tarjimly connects a volunteer translator to a refugee, asylum seeker and immigrant who needs it in real time. Now an app, but started as a Facebook messenger chatbot.

Also see: Bridge

In crisis situations, there will be many different ways language can become a barrier for a refugee accessing basic rights like food and housing. Tarjimly tries to lessen these hurdles for them and for the aid workers that need immediate help at a crucial moment.

Like Tarjimly, MEU alerts volunteers to translate in real time, but mostly for the purpose of spreading awareness to as many people as possible of an incident that should get more attention.

FactStream is a real time fact-checking app to corroborate the veracity of what is being said during a live event. For now it is manual, but the idea is that it will be automated.

See also: Check.

Increasing the ability to get timely reliable information is crucial for rapid response scenarios, but also to stop misinformation that could lead to acts of violence.

As FactStream and Check do, MEU also wants to verify incoming information as an incident or event is occurring (as well as other types of context). The MEU workflow could use these tools to do so, or learn from both of their methodologies to improve its own.

The ACLU has the Mobile Justice app so that anyone can record police misconduct and send a report back to them.

Like MigraCam, the Mobile Justice app monitors police behavior to keep officers accountable and aware of their own behavior towards those who they are supposed to protect.

There is also the Citizen (formerly Vigilante) app that allows people to livestream a crime or an incident that requires emergency. The users will get updates and 911 alerts, and be able “to share information to keep each other safe”. However, as the previous name hints (though the company says it’s more aware and is trying to fix this), the app facilitates troublesome discriminatory practices where users can report on others who they deem to look suspicious, while some might even go further and possibly take matters onto their own hands.

The Mobile Justice app lets people live stream police activity and then the report you send with it gives background on what happened. In this case, since the app is from the ACLU, they would be doing the witnessing and then mobilize their resources to achieve justice if needed.

The Citizen app has good features that MEU also has, but could still improve and learn from other platforms: a notification system to alert about an incident and ways for users to communicate with each other to get valuable information. However, MEU’s focus is on overseeing authorities and not others in our community.

Twitch is one of many platforms where gamers can live stream while they play and their own reactions to it, as an audience learns from them and interacts with them and with the rest of the audience through live chats.

Read more: How to stream your gaming sessions

Watching videos of others playing video games in real time is not just about learning new tricks, but it also connects you to a larger group of people who have a shared common interest. Can we similarly activate a community interested in a social justice issue to learn more about it and expand a network of solidarity around it?

MEU wants to facilitate understanding, but more importantly, wants to connect people who care about issues to those who are affected by them.

The integration of virtual objects and digital information within real physical spaces: combining two distinct spaces into a remixed imaginary (but also real?) one. The mirrorworld adds an other layer (or multiple) of information within the real one. Everything will be tagged or linked with more info to read, visualize and explore.

For example, online gaming has had the ability of playing together at the same time remotely. AR games like Pokemon Go also let you play with each other online yet using your own physical space. It also lets you play together locally in that same physical space.

Read more: AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld

Some of the questions of the mirrorworld, this virtual world overlayed on top of the real one through Augmented Reality, is who decides what is tagged in this world? Will everyone be able to? Will there be laws allowing certain people to dominate certain spaces? How will this world aggravate the problem of unreliable information? How will this misinformation lead to human rights abuses? Will there be new forms of discrimination and injustices that our virtual manifestations face that will have consequences in the real physical world? Will authoritarian states be able to better keep track of our movements by the “virtual steps” that we take in this mirrorworld?

But can there be new possibilities to interact with each other, collaborate and form communities that come together to achieve and tackle challenges that seemed too hard before? Can the mirrorworld allow for safe spaces that groups need to organize and coordinate against represive regimes? Can the information that people leave provide documentation that a certain event indeed did happen no matter how much others tried to erase it?

Like Pokemon Go, you could possibly see the stream and the participation that is happening in real time overlayed in your own space. And besides having a centralized platform where you can take a look at all the streams that have happened through MEU, you could potentially also visualize this (and the corresponding context and translations) as a layer that you can access within the location where the stream happened. That moment in time is now archived within an actual place. Context has been added and automatically connected to the previous history of a space, and then you can see that narrative arc of it. You could link that digital information imprinted in that space to others and create a virtual map that you can physically follow, where you connect the dots with each step you take.

The popular video game Fortnite hosted a concert in one of its virtual spaces in which supposedly 10 million of its users attented at the same time through their avatars. Users could use VR to feel like they were in an actual concert.

Read more: Fortnite’s Marshmello Concert Is the Future of the Metaverse

See also “Twilio Powers Real-Time Communications on the Magic Leap Platform“, about real time communication/co-presence of users in a virtual room through their digital representations (avatars).

Video exposes human rights abuses and lets people see realities that might otherwise remain hidden. Virtual reality allows people to immerse themselves in those experiences even more, and if done so in real time, people can congregate and feel like they are in the same space with each other while someone shows their reality to them. But is this needed? Is video enough? Allowing to use all your senses to feel you are in a space or situation more fully further desensitize people to others’ issues or make them feel more empathetic towards them? Anonymity can also lead to a heightened manifestation of harmful behavior that already exists in the internet, such as as harassment.

Mobil-Eyes Us is about trying to have people be more fully inside a live stream’s experience at the moment it is happening, while also getting them to take actions that benefit those on the ground. Doing this through VR would be another step into making it feel more real, but more than the experience of the events unfolding, what types of actions would distant witnesses be able to do to help out in that moment beyond giving context and translating that only VR will be able to make possible?

The possibility of using AR to integrate parts of a real time experience virtually onto your own space. For example, seeing virtual manifestations complementing an experience while actually attending a live sporting event or concert, or reversely, being able to see that live event virtually superimposed in your own reality.

Read more: Social media’s future is live-event AR

Like a livestream, people will be able to show the conditions they are facing in real time, but then can also add further details that only a select group of people who are physically (or remotely) present can access to if there is a need for security or privacy. However, the reverse is also possible where secret messages targeting people could lead to intimidation and violence.

Giving context would be taken to another level if you can view and append layers of information that you can see as it is getting added as an event is happening in front of you. Visualizing someone else’s physical space virtually in your own space is a big step towards the immersive co-presence that MEU is striving for. Is it possible to also add context remotely to superimpose that exact physical space with information? Can people on the ground tag the space around them with questions they want answered or contextualized remotely? Can you feel more present with the others who are collaborating remotely if you can also see each other and what you are doing in each other’s spaces? Will you feel more of a community if you can actually see people next to you working?

Using VR and AR as tools for embodied learning: to train you to deal with challenging scenarios (surgery, dealing with patients or clients, etc) by making you feel like you are performing the action in real life.

Read more:

How Immersive Learning Technology Is Bringing Education and Training Into the Future

Virtual Simulations Offer a Cure to Doctors’ Poor Bedside Manner

Walmart is putting 17,000 VR headsets in its US stores for training

Haptic feedback is making VR surgery feel like the real thing

Will VR Train the Next Generation of Soccer Stars?

If you are doing human rights work, there might be situations where you might be in a dangerous or challenging scenario. You might want to practice how to deal with ethical cases, or you might even want to learn by embodying how others have had to deal with those situations. VR simulations offers the opportunity to role play these cases in a more immersive way. VR has also been used as therapy to deal with mental health issues such as trauma, and some claim that alternative embodiment (being in the place of another person with a different background from you) can get that person to deal with their bias or aggressive behaviors.

Livestreams could be archived and turned into a VR simulation that people could experience. This offers another way to give context: how did you feel when you were in that situation that the frontline witness was in? It can also help to train and prepare distant witnesses before an actual rapid response situation. But besides that, what other tasks can be performed in real time through VR (more physical embodied ones beyond) beyond the ones we currently have (researching, translating, writing)? And as we perform this task, what will we learn?

Reach is a webVR platform that allows anyone to create volumetric content, to capture the 3D model of a place or objects, and then let them add more content (text, more footage, audio) into the scene.

Read more: Nonny de la Peña wants to put virtual reality within Reach

See also: Wonda VR Studio

Border Stories was made using Reach: a VR project where people can “experience real stories of the people affected by the border wall” along the US-Mexico border. The platform wants more people to be able to tell their stories through VR, such as social issues that wants you to better understand the consequences of the border wall for the actual people living it.

Reach is an accessible tool that could let MEU integrate volumetric content as added context, linking streams together into a narrative or to experience the stream itself in VR. Some possibilities:

• Livestream person on a green screen and show in a 3d representation of a different place
• Could also live stream both the person and the volumetric content (so the surroundings) and then stitch together in real time
• Have people live stream from different locations but be present in one volumetric space
• We could also create a safe and closed volumetric space (so only accessible to a chosen few) where people can interact and give support in real time
• Could also link the streams from different locations but pertaining to the same topic to create a narrative arc

Smart home fitness tech, in particular Mirror and Peloton, immerses users in their own interactive personal gym: tracking their workout data, which turn into personalized workout sessions, while allowing them to interact in live classes remotely. Mirror is a large screen that reflects you and where you can interact with the trainer in real time, while Peloton is a smaller screen with similar features on a stationary bike. Why not just use free workout sessions and your own exercise equipment? As Wired states, “what this new wave of products promises is a feedback loop between you and the fitness gurus who grunt and flex and crunch before you. Peloton instructors give shout-outs during live classes to screen names they see performing well. Mirror studies your personal data to build customized weekly workouts.”

Read more: Prepare for the Smart Home Fitness Revolution

See also: Facebook Portal

There are data privacy issues with products that personalize your experience, but these smart home fitness tech open a window into how we could customize remote experiences to motivate people to take meaningful actions remotely and better leverage digital participation in our human rights campaigns beyond donating or signing petitions. Could we have a social justice trainer that can guide us with specific tasks that have an impact in people’s lives, while improving ours as well?

For MEU, these trainers are the frontline witnesses that show what the realities on the ground are, and guide us on how to contribute in the ways that those communities need. We take direction from them. While these fitness platforms provide self-improvement and “simulate a sense of togetherness”, MEU wants to create direct channels for distant witnesses to connect with each other and human rights defenders and improve lives beyond ours.

SportsCastr Live is a platform where users stream their commentary of live sports, and get rewarded with cryptocurrency tokens by the amount of viewers they get while doing so, as well as through tips from other users. And through SportsCastr Live FanChain’s cryptocurrency, these streamers can access real-time data (from external AI-powered sports data company STATS) to give more depth to their analysis of the game.

Read more: STATS, SportsCastr Establish Partnership for Real Time Data With FanChain Integration

In rapid response scenarios, there is crucial information that is needed to make the correct decisions quickly to benefit those who might be in a threatening situation. Getting that relevant data in a timely manner is key.

Although not powered by AI like SportsCastr Live, both platforms want to provide real-time analysis of a situation that is happening at that very moment. MEU is people-powered: it does it through the efforts of its distant witnesses.

In addition, how could we use Blockchain technology to establish trustworthy agreements of the type of interactions and relationships that would determine the actions within a platform like MEU? How can it then measure and impact the value of those actions, and incentivize the different participants to engage even more?

The vTaiwan deliberation process evolved from the digital organizing of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, and “now routinely leads to passage of laws by Taiwan’s national legislature”. In the process, the agendas are crowd-sourced and are done so through pol.is, a survey tool where people submit their proposals and vote for each others. Using machine learning, pol.is clusters and visualizes opinion groups in real time, making it easy to identify points of divergence and consensus.

Read more: vTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberpunk Frontier of Democracy

See also:

Granicus, as an example of live streaming public meetings that people can interact (comment, vote, etc) online.

Loomio, for another collaborative decision-making tool that can be used in real time.

MindMixer, (there’s also many other similar civic engagement tools) for an example of a platform that governments can use to allow people to submit ideas, vote, comment and engage in specific challenges.

Increasing participation in the democratic decision-making process, allowing for less intermediaries in government and the potential for more people’s opinions to bubble up and be taken into consideration. That is, if they have access to the digital tools.

Though MEU is not entirely about decision-making or surveying opinions, contextualizing in real time expands on the issue so more people understand what is happening or even hear different perspectives about it. There is an element of decision-making when figuring out what actions need to be taken at a particular moment.

Scribe is a tool for real-time crowdsourced transcription: using machine learning, it processes audio from a mobile device, distributes small segments to many workers that caption them quickly, and merges it all into a single transcribed text.

Read more: Real-time Transcription through Crowdsourcing

Immediate transcription services might be needed in certain human rights situations, such as for quickly building legal cases when a team is at capacity.

The technology and process behind Scribe can be used specifically to do the same for the translation tasks within MEU, but also how to possibly develop smaller chunks of contextualizing tasks (microtasks) that can be more easily done, but still amount to significant actions.

Artificial Intelligence for Digital Response uses machine learning (artificial intelligence) to go quickly through tweets generated during a humanitarian crisis and create automatic ways for volunteers (human intelligence) to tag up that information through simple clicks (thousands of messages per minute!).

The software quickly curates relevant data for humanitarian or human rights rapid response circumstances, augmenting the potential of human rights defenders work. MicroMappers, for example, is a joint effort with the United Nations that lets humanitarian organizations “make sense of social media generated during disasters”.

MEU at the moment relies on the distant witnesses’ human capacity to find information quickly, such as social media and other relevant reports to the issue being covered in the livestream. Applying machine learning software to automate some of those tasks so that distant witnesses can focus on analysis and make tasks simpler, and thus more likely to do, would improve and scale the amount of tasks that one distant witness could do, and the likelihood that more distant witnesses would join.