Publications

NEW PUBLICATION!

Read our new guide, Design from the Margins: A Methodology to De-weaponize Tech.

It offers a short outline of the Design from the Margins (DFM) framework and is designed for those committed to creating just, and rights-protective technologies that resist being weaponized for surveillance, policing, or harm. This is to be fully launched with its accompanying materials in late 2026.

Queer Resistance to Digital Oppression, ARTICLE 19 in collaboration with the De|Center (July 2024). This report was published in four parts:

• Executive Summary

• Regional Context

• Research Findings

• Recommendations

Discreet App Icons and Other Safety Changes on Grindr 

Queer Syrian refugees in Lebanon told us they faced risks at army and police checkpoints, where they often experienced profiling and had their devices searched. Many times, it was the Grindr logo of the app on their phone which outed them and increased their risk. 

We worked with the Guardian Project to implement the Discreet App Icon feature in 2017 to allow users to make their app look inconspicuously like other apps. Originally made free for “high risk countries,” in 2020, it was released for free globally and is one of the app’s more popular safety features. Subsequently, in consultation with other LGBTQ communities in MENA, DFM has been used to push for many other security and harm reduction features on the app, such as PINs, screenshot blocking, unsend messages and images, direct lines of communication to communities, and more.

Our later research also gave us evidence that the protection works in the circumstances it was designed for. For example, in 2024, a queer research participant described being stopped and searched at a protest after changing Grindr’s icon and name. Authorities did not find the app or additional material connecting him to his sexuality, and he was ultimately released. In a context where discovery could have resulted in imprisonment, our deniability materially changed the risk.

The intervention has since spread beyond Grindr. We later worked directly with Signal to extend the same harm-reduction approach to secure messaging, connecting Signal with developers who had implemented the original Grindr feature and sharing the underlying threat model around coercive device searches.

Proton VPN’s Discreet Icon feature drew from this work, extending a protection first developed with queer communities facing device searches to people using circumvention and privacy tools in high-risk environments. Similar forms of app hiding and cloaking have since appeared across other apps such dating apps SCRUFF and Jack’d, while app hiding and cloaking have also become increasingly common at the operating-system level. What began as a protection designed around queer people facing coercive device searches has become a much broader privacy pattern and an industry standard.

What began as a protection designed around queer people facing coercive device searches has become a much broader privacy pattern.

This work was conducted as part of on-going research with ARTICLE 19.

Timed Messages on WhatsApp

In 2021, through research with LGBTQ communities in MENA and the criminal defense lawyers who represent them, we demonstrated the increasing use of digital evidence to criminalize LGBTQ people and how to navigate and counter it. We used the findings to work with WhatsApp to implement more disappearing messages options to reduce the amount of data gathered on people’s devices which may later be used against them in court. 

This work was conducted as part of research by Afsaneh Rigot supported by ARTICLE 19 and Jessica Fjeld, Mason Kortz, and students in the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School. 

Locked Chats on WhatsApp 

In 2023, we extended our work with Meta around protecting LGBTQ communities in MENA, the long standing research and expertise of the team into the patterns of device searches, interrogations, and data extraction from devices for sentencing of criminalized communities, and used additional findings from our research to create a feature on WhatsApp where the most “high risk” conversations could be hidden in locked chats. This adds a layer of protection for people using the app who are at risk of their devices being searched without a warrant and their communications used against them. 

We have continued to push for WhatsApp to refine the implementation of this feature. Since its introduction, it has been updated with unique passcodes, options to fully hide/invisibilize the chat, and quick hide options for emergencies. More changes and consultations are being done to disentangle the feature fully from biometrics to ensure it is in line with DFM and needs of decentered communities. 

By 2025, we confirmed that the feature could be used without requiring biometric unlocking; an important refinement because biometrics themselves can be compelled under physical force. We continue to work with WhatsApp on usability and implementation so that the protection functions under the coercive conditions for which it was originally designed. The protection is now available at global scale.

This work was conducted as part of research by Afsaneh Rigot supported by ARTICLE 19, Jessica Fjeld, Mason Kortz, and students in the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School. 

App Icon Cloaking on Signal 

In 2023, based on additional research with LGBTQ communties, activists, and protesters in MENA and beyond, we worked with Signal to implement a feature similar to the first one Grindr deployed, to allow users to hide the Signal logo on their phones and use a different, inconspicuous icon instead. Our research revealed that when these communities were stopped by police or interrogated and risked device searches, they were especially concerned about exposing the data they had in Signal,  because Signal as an app is high security and often holds much of the most sensitive data, such as their organizing communication or other “criminalizing” data. This is currently only on Android. 

The Signal work was a direct transfer of an intervention first developed with Grindr. We connected Signal with developers who had implemented the original Grindr protection, transferring both technical experience and the underlying harm-reduction logic: in contexts of repression, the presence of a recognizable privacy or secure-messaging app can itself become a threat surface.

This transfer also helped demonstrate that the original intervention was not narrowly about dating apps or LGBTQ users. A protection developed around queer Syrian refugees at checkpoints proved relevant to activists, protesters, journalists, and others whose use of secure communications can itself trigger additional scrutiny. The same design pattern has since continued to spread into other privacy and circumvention tools.

This work was conducted both as part of on-going research with ARTICLE 19 and Afsaneh Rigot’s independent work and research.