Can Jigsaw’s Designers Make the Internet Safer?

At Jigsaw—an incubator in New York City that’s part of Google parent Alphabet Inc.—a team of designers and engineers has a sweeping mission: to create applications and promote technology that protects Internet users from online censorship, harassment, and extremist attacks. “The high-level strategy is, if we can make products that are robust for users in these sorts of situations, then that can make the internet stronger,” says CJ Adams, a product manager at Jigsaw.

It’s not as simple as it sounds, as Jigsaw staffers well know. Adams has focused on such issues within Google since 2012, when he began working at Jigsaw’s forerunner, Google Ideas. About three years ago, Adams and a team started to think about filter bubbles—the way that algorithms in search engines and social media platforms serve up personalized news results based on where you are and past searches or clicks. They released Unfiltered.news in March 2016. The tool is an interactive map of the world that highlights the stories most missed by the local media where a user is based.