 It's CES week here in Las Vegas, which is usually all about connecting people through technology. It's amazing and inspiring. But the enormous benefits of the internet come with dangers as well. 65% of internet users aged 18 to 29 have reported being abused or harassed online, and it's worse for young women and minorities. So this year, Intel, Recode, and Vox Media, the Verge's parent company, have partnered on a new initiative called Hack Harassment, which aims to fight the effects of abuse and harassment online. The plan is to hold a series of hackathons throughout the year, with a major progress report in May at the Code Conference. I sat down with Kara Swisher, the executive editor of Recode, and Brian Krzanich, the CEO of Intel, to talk about hacking harassment and what they hope to achieve. The internet creates an environment where people can do whatever they want. It really does. And sort of ugly sides of them come out in a way they wouldn't in civil society. And so one of the things we have to do is try to create, one, tools to help people who are the victims of this, and secondly, make these companies aware that this is an important topic for everybody who's using their things from Facebook to Google to Snapchat to anyone else. So what's the goal of the hackathons that you'll be doing throughout the year? You know, I think there's really two goals of the hackathon. First, there are potentially some genuine technical solutions we can come up with. They may be things like identifying keywords, phrases, actual context in messages, and telling the person that may be interpreted as harassment and giving them that feedback before they post it. That might slow things down. The second part of the hackathon harassment is just getting the word out. At the end of the day, I think we can make a lot of technology that can reduce the harassment levels, but it's going to be when the peer pressure, when it just becomes unacceptable societally, that's when harassment will really change. It really sounds like what you want is for these companies to commit to building tools for their users to control. Easy tools, not tools. They have tools. They're just hard to use. They still, I just the other day had an incident with someone on Twitter and it was really difficult, and I'm good at this. And if I can't figure it out, the average teenager who's getting, you know, pilloried on Facebook or Twitter or wherever has no hope of being able to deal with this except to sign off. And that shouldn't be the only choice you have is to sign off. So at the Code Conference in May, the goal is to present some findings and some concrete steps forward. What are you hoping to announce there? If you could get everything you wanted, what would you be announcing at the Code Conference? What I'd love for the May Code event is to see the partner list of exploded so that there's tens if not hundreds of partners that are really joining forces. And that we've done a couple of these harassment, the hack the harassment events, and we have a couple of solutions that we can start to talk about and say, hey, these are some things we recommend that sites like your own and like ours can start to implement and help technically reduce the amount of harassment as well. Look, online harassment's a real problem. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to solve it. Obviously the Verge is part of OX Media, and I'm proud to be partners in the hack harassment initiative. But there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered, a lot of solutions that need to be developed, and a lot of partners that have to sign up.
 It's CES week here in Las Vegas, which is usually all about connecting people through
 technology. It's amazing and inspiring. But the enormous benefits of the internet come
 with dangers as well. 65% of internet users aged 18 to 29 have reported being abused or
 harassed online, and it's worse for young women and minorities. So this year, Intel,
 Recode, and Vox Media, the Verge's parent company, have partnered on a new initiative
 called Hack Harassment, which aims to fight the effects of abuse and harassment online.
 The plan is to hold a series of hackathons throughout the year, with a major progress
 report in May at the Code Conference. I sat down with Kara Swisher, the executive editor
 of Recode, and Brian Krzanich, the CEO of Intel, to talk about hacking harassment and
 what they hope to achieve. The internet creates an environment where people can do whatever
 they want. It really does. And sort of ugly sides of them come out in a way they wouldn't
 in civil society. And so one of the things we have to do is try to create, one, tools
 to help people who are the victims of this, and secondly, make these companies aware that
 this is an important topic for everybody who's using their things from Facebook to Google
 to Snapchat to anyone else. So what's the goal of the hackathons that you'll be doing
 throughout the year? You know, I think there's really two goals of the hackathon. First,
 there are potentially some genuine technical solutions we can come up with. They may be
 things like identifying keywords, phrases, actual context in messages, and telling the
 person that may be interpreted as harassment and giving them that feedback before they
 post it. That might slow things down. The second part of the hackathon harassment is
 just getting the word out. At the end of the day, I think we can make a lot of technology
 that can reduce the harassment levels, but it's going to be when the peer pressure, when
 it just becomes unacceptable societally, that's when harassment will really change. It really
 sounds like what you want is for these companies to commit to building tools for their users
 to control. Easy tools, not tools. They have tools. They're just hard to use. They still,
 I just the other day had an incident with someone on Twitter and it was really difficult,
 and I'm good at this. And if I can't figure it out, the average teenager who's getting,
 you know, pilloried on Facebook or Twitter or wherever has no hope of being able to deal
 with this except to sign off. And that shouldn't be the only choice you have is to sign off.
 So at the Code Conference in May, the goal is to present some findings and some concrete
 steps forward. What are you hoping to announce there? If you could get everything you wanted,
 what would you be announcing at the Code Conference? What I'd love for the May Code event is to
 see the partner list of exploded so that there's tens if not hundreds of partners that are
 really joining forces. And that we've done a couple of these harassment, the hack the
 harassment events, and we have a couple of solutions that we can start to talk about
 and say, hey, these are some things we recommend that sites like your own and like ours can
 start to implement and help technically reduce the amount of harassment as well. Look, online
 harassment's a real problem. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to solve it.
 Obviously the Verge is part of OX Media, and I'm proud to be partners in the hack harassment
 initiative. But there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered, a lot of solutions
 that need to be developed, and a lot of partners that have to sign up.