Saturday, 25th, January 2025: Son Vivienne, Trans Gender Victoria. New ruling In case of Giggle vs Tickle, Midsumma Ruling
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Macca and Paul talk to Son Vivienne, as they discuss New ruling In case of Giggle vs Tickle, Midsumma Ruling
The Giggle for Girls app was developed by Grover in 2019 in order to “create a little corner of the Internet where women… could have a refuge away from men” for networking, support, and friendship (paragraph 95 of the decision). Her precise intentions for the women-only “refuge” and whom it aimed to exclude became clearer through her testimony about the onboarding process. Grover had enlisted the support of a “gender detection” feature from the artificial intelligence (AI) system Kairos to screen users. According to Grover’s affidavit, the AI facial recognition process was “the digital equivalent of what human beings do every day in perceiving sex, in particular male sex.” As she further clarified, she “did not consider the use of the word ‘gender’ in the context of its ‘gender detection feature’ to mean anything other than the detection of biological sex.” Implied in this sex/gender equivalence, and later explicitly admitted in cross-examination, was Grover’s belief that the term “women” only included cisgender women.
In February 2021, when Tickle, a transgender woman, uploaded a selfie and the AI system allowed her access to the app, Grover’s vision of an exclusive women-only space and Tickle’s gender identity were set on a collision course. About eight months after joining Giggle, Tickle found that she could no longer post content or comment on posts by other users. Soon after, when she tried to buy premium features on the app, she received a “User Blocked” message. Unbeknownst to her, Grover had been manually reviewing admitted users’ onboarding selfies. The court later found that Grover had personally blocked Tickle’s access to the app based on a “quick and reflexive” judgment that she appeared to be male. After her access was blocked, Tickle tried to contact Grover several times by email and phone, but aside from one missed call from Grover, they had no communication. Tickle’s access to the app was never restored.
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