Safety shouldn’t be an afterthought in open source research, so we’ve incorporated safety protections directly into the Atlos interface.

Researcher Resilience

Graphic violence puts researchers at risk of vicarious trauma. Atlos takes several steps to protect researchers:

• Atlos mutes all videos by default, because researchers find that the audio of graphic media is often more disturbing than the video.
• Atlos makes all media grayscale by default, because black-and-white photos and videos have a smaller psychological impact than color media.
• Atlos helps reduce surprise exposures with a “Graphic Violence” warning, because media can be especially impactful when researchers aren’t expecting to be exposed to something disturbing.
• Atlos doesn’t display thumbnails or previews for graphic media, so researchers must choose to view graphic content.

Civilian Safety

Revealing the locations or identities of civilians can put them in harm’s way. Here’s how we handle sensitive media:

• When researchers upload new content, they can tag media that “Threatens Civilian Safety.”
• We treat sensitive media differently: our organizational partners can still see media that puts civilians at risk, but it isn’t visible to other Atlos researchers.