Your story is knowledge.
Rethreading the Algorithm is a public archive exploring how Black people experience, question, navigate, and reshape technology. If you choose to contribute, your story will become part of a growing record of lived experience with technology.
You decide what to share.
You can skip optional questions, use text instead of audio where available, stop before submitting, and review your contribution before it is published.
Before you begin
You'll start by briefly describing an experience you've had with technology.
Then, you'll answer reflection questions about what mattered, what changed, who shaped the experience, how you responded, and what you came to understand.
We'll bring your responses together in a Story Guide that highlights some of the threads you've identified. You can use the guide as you tell the longer version of your story, but it is not a script. You decide what belongs in your story and how you want to tell it.
Your responses also help create your quilt square and make your story discoverable through the archive.
The experience takes about 15–25 minutes.
Taking part is your choice. You may skip optional questions, choose how much detail to share, and stop at any time before submitting.
Before submitting, you'll review the version of your contribution that will appear in the public archive. You can make changes or choose not to submit it.
Depending on how you participate, we may collect written responses, survey selections, story context, and audio you choose to record.
If you submit your contribution, its reviewed public version may include your story or transcript, approved audio, selected themes and context, excerpts from your contribution, and the quilt square generated from your responses.
Raw survey records, consent records, review notes, and other internal project materials are not part of the public archive.
Every contribution is reviewed before publication. We may remove identifying information, private information about other people, or material that could create a significant risk of harm.
We will not intentionally rewrite your story in ways that change its meaning. Project-created summaries, transcripts, themes, or other interpretations will remain distinguishable from your original words where appropriate.
If you record audio, we will store and transcribe it to process your contribution. If approved for publication, your recording may become part of your public story. Keep in mind that a person's voice can sometimes be identifying even when their name is not included.
If you submit your story in writing instead, you may separately choose to allow a clearly labeled AI-generated audio reading. It will not imitate or be presented as your voice.
Please avoid names, exact addresses, workplaces, usernames, or other identifying details unless they are important to your story and you are comfortable sharing them publicly.
Even after review or redaction, someone familiar with the people or events involved may recognize a story. Sharing a personal experience may also bring up discomfort, frustration, or difficult memories.
Rethreading is a public, searchable archive. Once published, a story may be found through search engines, linked to or quoted, copied, downloaded, cached, archived, or analyzed by third parties.
Public web content may also be encountered or collected by automated and AI systems. Rethreading cannot fully control what happens to copies of a story outside the systems we operate.
Unpublished responses are stored in a restricted project database, and audio files are stored with limited access. Rethreading currently uses Supabase/Postgres and private file storage to manage these materials.
The archive is intended to be long-term, but you may request a correction or withdrawal using your submission identifier.
We can remove withdrawn material from the archive and other systems we control. We cannot guarantee removal of copies already cached, downloaded, archived, or collected elsewhere.