We're supporting five new projects building crowdsourced datasets for the public good

(THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2023) — Mozilla is proud to announce the 2023 Data Futures Lab cohort: five ambitious projects developing data donation initiatives in the public interest. Projects hail from India, Switzerland, and beyond, and will address issues like health research, online gender-based violence, and broadband inequalities.

These projects will each receive up to $100,000, tailored mentoring, support in public relations efforts and campaigns, and training in ethical data frameworks.

Last October, we released an open call seeking applications that were both geographically and thematically diverse. In total, we received some 105 applications from 31 countries.

As an experimental space for instigating new approaches to data stewardship challenges, the Data Futures Lab is the perfect place for these projects to create and grow alternative datasets for communities.

Mozilla has already been exploring data donation through RegretsReporter, where users contribute their YouTube interactions to better understand the recommendation algorithm; and Common Voice, where users contribute their voice recordings to a common dataset. Now, through this cohort, Mozilla will support and develop data donation projects that are working towards opening up data “black boxes,” filling data voids, and creating more value for society.

Says Miguel Morachimo, Program Officer, Data Futures Lab: “This year’s cohort mixes researchers with entrepreneurs, programmers with community activists, and communities working on broadband access, mobility, and health data. This group of projects truly shows the range and potential of creating better data ecosystems for the public good — and we are excited to accompany them on that journey.”

Says Brandi Geurkink, Senior Policy Fellow: “We are excited to explore innovative approaches to common challenges in the field of data donation and to share this collective knowledge with our broader community.”

Learn more about the projects:

DataKind

DataKind is a global nonprofit headquartered in the U.S. that seeks to leverage data science for the greater good. Working in collaboration with the Black Wealth Data Center, DataKind will create an interactive data tool to help community leaders, policymakers, and access providers understand broadband inequalities in the U.S. Leveraging existing but dispersed data and a network of collaborators, DataKind aspires to shine a light on where “digital deserts” exist, and how different communities are impacted by them.

Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)

OONI is a global free software project measuring internet censorship around the world. Since 2012, OONI has openly published more than a billion network measurements from 241 countries and territories, thereby hosting one the largest open datasets on internet censorship to date. They will develop a new version of OONI Run, a tool that allows coordinated testing of website blocking using OONI's existing infrastructure and contributing to its dataset. They seek to deploy this tool in the field through their established partnerships with 41 digital rights organizations around the world.

POSMO

Posmo is a data cooperative based in Zurich, Switzerland working on ethical ways of collecting and creating value from mobility data. Posmo will continue to develop the Posmo Data Market, a trustworthy data space offering detailed personal mobility and socioeconomic data to third parties while providing data subjects with control over the use of their data. During this year, among other milestones, Posmo will continue to develop its data governance processes, define a set of criteria for sharing mobility data with third parties, and build the internal approval process through the ethics committee.

Tattle

Tattle is a civic technology company working for a healthier online information ecosystem in India. They will continue to develop Uli, their browser plugin that gives social media users tools for a collective response to online gender-based violence, and seek to include new crowdsourcing tools for annotation and reporting.

Tidepool

Tidepool is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California, developing technology to provide intuitive software products that help people with diabetes. Tidepool will continue to grow its Big Data Donation Project, which enables people to donate data from their diabetes devices to help fuel the next generation of diabetes research. During this year, they will develop a blanket real-world evidence protocol to expand the potential impact of the donated data. They will also conduct interviews to develop a report to help measure and share the impact of the data sets donated to date.

These five organizations will be presenting their projects and talking about data donations as a way of mobilizing communities next month on an exclusive MozFest Panel. Sign up to get your ticket here.

Press contact: Kevin Zawacki | [email protected]