LadiesCorner
Digital Focus
K
asey Machin is the co-founder of Parity YEG and the Chief Operating Officer at Areto Labs. She and her colleagues at Areto Labs found that they could do something about trolls who attacked female candidates running for elections. She worked as a policy and communications adviser to Edmonton City Councillor Andrew Knack and witnessed first hand how nasty trolls are. She was resolved to change the vitriolic narrative for women who would like to serve in a political capacity but are damaged by these trolls emotionally. ParityBOT, a Twitter bot that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to track, measure, and analyze tweets sent to women candidates running for office and for every extremely toxic tweet sent, a positive message of support is automatically posted in response. The idea resonated with people and there was clearly a broader need for this type of technology so they decided to start Areto Labs as a social impact company in 2020. ParityBot has been used across Canada, Australia and the United States of America. They are on a mission to build a suite of culture-building apps and bots to help leaders foster more positive and inclusive digital communities. LCCMedia was excited to chat with Kasey about her work.
Kasey Machin witnessed the destructiveness of trolls.
May I ask what inspired the work you do at ParityYeg? Before we started ParityYEG, I had been volunteering on many campaigns and boards aiming to increase gender parity in politics, but after the 2017 municipal election where we saw just two women elected to city council, after almost 100 years of gender disparity on council, I became really motivated to get involved specifically at a local level. Founding ParityYEG was a way for us to pool our efforts, networks, and resources together with the sole mission of encouraging and supporting gender diverse candidates to run for office. Gender parity is critical to a healthy democracy and governments should reflect those they represent. For too long they haven’t and we wanted to do something about it. Are you pleased with the progress PartyYEG is making at the moment in Alberta? Absolutely! From a ParityYEG perspective, Edmonton not
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LadiesCorner — Winter 2021