Explore digital legal rights through one of four prompts about social media, teen privacy, human rights and artificial intelligence.
Submission dates use UTC.
Every kidfluencer law so far pays a child for their labor but doesn’t regulate their exposure. Should the law try to protect a child’s psychological privacy the same way it protects their earnings — and if so, what would that law even look like?
Social media algorithms track teens to build the addictive, personalized feeds parents want restricted, but that same tracking is also what flags self-harm content and connects teens to peer support. Where should the law draw the line between algorithmic tracking that protects a teen and algorithmic tracking that exploits one, when it’s often the exact same data doing both jobs?
Since 2012, the UN Human Rights Council’s guiding principle on digital rights has been that existing human rights apply online just as they do offline, rather than requiring a new framework specific to digital life. Does this principle remain adequate to the challenges of the digital age, or does it warrant reconsideration?
In 2018, Amazon scrapped an AI hiring tool after discovering it had taught itself to penalize resumes containing the word ‘women’s,’ having been trained on a decade of resumes submitted mostly by men. Under existing employment discrimination law, should liability for that outcome fall on Amazon for deploying the tool, on the engineers who built it without catching the bias, or on no one — on the theory that the algorithm only automated a pattern that already existed in who got hired?
Choose one prompt. Submit your original essay as a PDF or DOCX (maximum 10 MB). Include an essay title and acknowledge the sources you use. Maximum 1,500 words. One entry per participant; you may replace or withdraw your entry while submissions remain open.
First Prize: $250 USD. Runner-up and honourable recognition may include publication on the BraverTogether website.
Develop a clear argument, use accurate evidence, consider other perspectives and write in your own voice.
Submit your essay