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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:57PM   Printer-friendly

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Squad, the 'anti-bro startup,' is creating a safe space for teenage girls online – TechCrunch

Squad, an app that allows you to video chat and share your phone screen with a friend in real time, has tapped into a demographic clamoring for a safe space to gather online. Without any marketing, the startup has collected 450,000 registered users in eight months, 70% of which are teenage girls. So far this year, users have clocked in 1 million hours inside Squad calls.

“Completely accidentally we’ve developed this global audience of users and it’s girls all over the world,” Squad co-founder and chief executive officer Esther Crawford tells TechCrunch. “In India, it’s girls. In Saudi Arabia, it’s girls. In the U.S., it’s girls. Even without us localizing it, girls all over the world are finding it.”

“We want to be a place where girls can come and hang out,” – Squad co-founder and CEO Esther Crawford.

Crawford describes Squad, which she’s built alongside her co-founder and chief technology officer Ethan Sutin, as the “anti-bro startup.” Not only because it’s led by a woman and boasts a cap table that’s 30% women and 30% people of color, but because she’s completely rewriting the consumer social startup playbook.

“We are trying to learn from the best in what they did but get rid of the shit,” Crawford said, referring to Snap, WhatsApp, Twitch and others. Twitch, a live-streaming platform for gamers, has become a social gathering place for Gen Z, she explains, but like many other communities on the internet, it’s failed its female users.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:26AM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:26AM (#878615) Journal

    What would we ever do if Anonymous Coward were to abandon us?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @02:42AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @02:42AM (#878652)

    Implode under the weight of unopposed stupidity.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @03:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @03:24AM (#878671)

      Implode under the weight of unopposed stupidity.

      Thanks for the love and recognition. I do it because I consider it my sacred duty. And you're welcome.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @09:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @09:32AM (#878800)

    Resurrect APK to have him / her create a HOSTS file solution?

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @10:21AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @10:21AM (#878814)

    I mean, based on this article? SN is on the road to getting 8channed minus the publicity. It hurts like having your teenaged kid get arrested for a hate crime. What have I / we done wrong, to raise them like this? Reading this article's comments - and a few others today - I am actually literally wondering if 8chan and /. being down/no-AC is making folks who otherwise might at least pretend to discuss articles instead go apeshit, virtue-signalling to their ingroup whose side (men's! white men's! dun matter who they are as long as they're white - and men!) they're on.

    It's like, can you all not see the irony in using identity politics yourselves, here, in the same paragraphs as you decry it? I don't read realDonaldTrump levels of selfawareness in it but maybe you're all playing the intellectual game like, 8 levels beyond me, and you're really hoping to change the world by being so obnoxiously intellectually dishonest that you disgust everyone else into not being similar.

    Maybe? Doubtful. So, one sad AC. With /. long gone (fuck beta) and now SN apparently sinking, maybe it's time to try to find some smaller forums.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @02:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @02:26PM (#878848)

      Review: Feminism for the 99% [socialistalternative.org] (CWI):

      In Feminism for the 99%, Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser set out to present a working-class women’s alternative to Sandberg’s corporate feminism and “equal opportunity domination” for a select few women in power. The authors write, “We aim to explain why feminists should choose the road of feminist strikes, why we must unite with other anticapitalist and antisystemic movements, and why our movement must become a feminism for the 99%.” Woven throughout the book, the authors outline their vision for a movement based on the understanding that true equality for women cannot be achieved under our current exploitative capitalist system.

      In discussing the central role of capitalism, the book draws out the persistent connection between violence against women and the growing capitalist crisis with its imposed austerity and cuts to public services. Since the 2008 economic crisis, the extreme magnitude of cuts to public programs, prevalence of low-wage jobs, and dismantling of the welfare state have disproportionately impacted women and, in some countries, led to a genuine throwing back of gender equality. An ever-increasing number of women workers in low-paid and part-time positions find themselves even more susceptible to harassment on the job, and a lack of labor protections further exacerbates the workplace violence experienced by women.

      The book puts special attention on social-reproduction theory, which they describe as the “people-making” needs of capitalism in contrast to the “profit-making” needs.

      Social-reproduction encompasses those unpaid activities which fall disproportionately to women and help sustain life outside of the workplace, including raising children, caring for the family, and maintaining the community. Capitalism overwhelmingly relies on outsourcing the burden of social-reproduction primarily onto women through millions of unpaid hours of domestic labor. This has led to a double or triple shift for many working-class women who have to take care of their families while also working one or two jobs. In contrast, as the authors point out, many wealthier women can cast the burden onto low-paid domestic workers.

      We must mobilize the largest possible mass marches, demonstrations, and boycotts, but strikes from paid work can much more powerfully halt capitalism’s ability to function and concretely demonstrate the tremendous force of a united working class. While women-dominated fields like education, health care, retail, and hospitality should play a powerful role in building for strikes, the movement will also need to mobilize strikes among broader working class forces, including among working class men who would benefit tremendously from paid parental leave and universal childcare....

      Just one example of the power of strike action to win the things that working class women need took place just a few years ago in Poland. In 2016, the Polish government attempted to push through a reactionary complete abortion ban, but the proposal was rejected after 140,000 women took to the streets in just a one-day strike action.

      Despite its limitations, Feminism for the 99% is a welcome alternative to the corporate feminism espoused by Sandberg’s Lean In. While it does not draw out the kind of socialist alternative needed to defeat sexism and capitalism, its call to build a united working class struggle against capitalism will help introduce a class-based socialist feminism to many of its readers.