As a father of 3 kids, the recent harassment and assault scandals in Hollywood proved disturbing. It is difficult to understand the degree of pathological behaviors exhibited by those who abuse their power. But as part of the great social fabric which is our society, we reject those behaviors. For us the question is how can we be better at preventing them? What can we do?

Any psychologist will tell you that our brain is a great pain-reward assessor, and the initial suggestion would be to push the lawmakers to enforce drastic consequences of such acts. Some cultures cut the hands of thieves, what could we cut here…

Although the cutting of anything is unlikely in today’s context, we can however turn towards technology and see if there is something of some value here. Technology companies have been falling short of our grand ideals lately.  We hoped for teleportation devices and instead received mobile devices capable of sharing pictures of Russian cats….

But looking harder we realized a simple way to prevent this type of behavior in action. It is a combination of an online technology and the principle of collective intelligence. At its essence, many people (especially the victims) knew of these harassment issues but were afraid to report them due to fear of retaliation.  Offering a digital tool that enables the collection of feedback confidentially protects the feedback providers from retaliation. The organization can  now ensure non pathological behaviors.

This is the type of solution we have witnessed in action at Checkster.  Where child supervision is needed, even at a technology company which rejects harassing behavior towards females. This is really why we exist.

These collective intelligence technologies, we hope, can at least ensure that our kids will not need to utilize the teleportation devices of the future to avoid sex offenders...