Lady Gaga‘s Born This Way Foundation is teaming up with Intel, Vox Media and Re/code to fight online harassment with a new initiative announced by Intel at CES this week called Hack Harassment. Largely in response to the so-called Gamergate phenomenon, which targets women in the video game industry for online harassment, the company announced Hack Harassment as just the latest of its initiatives to correct the treatment of women in the virtual sphere after ensuring that 43 percent of its new hires this past year were women or underrepresented minorities.
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The initiative will kick off with a series of “hackathons” focused on advancing anti-harassment technology. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich issued a statement that described how “online harassment has become a pervasive and often vicious problem with real-life repercussions. Today’s tech and media leaders have a collective responsibility and capability to identify solutions that can help reduce different forms of online harassment. We need to remember that behind every device, game, sensor or network is a real person with real feelings and real needs for safety.”
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Cynthia Germanotta, Gaga’s mother who is also the co-founder and president of Born This Way Foundation, was also on-hand to speak about how “young people are spending more time online than ever before, making it more important than ever before to face this problem head on.” The Foundation seems like a natural partner to Hack Harassment, given the Germanottas’ commitment to improving the lives of youths since its inception, and Gaga’s passion in particular for ending teen bullying, a topic which she has discussed with President Obama himself.