Reading In-Between the Lines
Erik C. Rye, Jeremy Blackburn, Robert Beverly · 2020
Efforts by content creators and social networks to enforce legal and policy-based norms, e.g. blocking hate speech and users, has driven the rise of unrestricted communication platforms. One such recent effort is Dissenter, a browser and web application that provides a conversational overlay for any web page. These conversations hide in plain sight -- users of Dissenter can see and participate in this conversation, whereas visitors using other browsers are oblivious to their existence. Further, the website and content owners have no power over the conversation as it resides in an overlay outside their control.