CEO MONTHLY / GLOBAL CEO EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2023 13 Mar23134 The company takes an empathic approach to all its interactions with clients. Shane says, “We don’t just give a sales pitch and try to make our product fit the needs of our clients. We listen to their problems; we try to understand what they’ve experienced so that we can help. Almost everyone has either experienced or witnessed online abuse of some kind, but we all deal with these situations in different ways. Our engagements with our clients are consultative and partnerdriven. We want to offer the best and most complete solution to address our clients’ problems. This often means fusing a technical solution with education and access to resources to build awareness.” The current focus of SocialProtect is sports teams in Australia and overseas. The company is working hard to ensure its solutions can handle the volume and range of comments that the athletes attract. Enjoying success in this area, the ambitions of the team at SocialProtect extend far beyond the app’s current capabilities. Shane says, “Our real goal is to make SocialProtect available to everyone around the world. It’s only when we all say that ‘enough is enough’ and adopt a unified stance that we can change the behaviour of those who attack, abuse, and humiliate others online. Over the next year, we will be working on a strategy to ensure people from around the world, from all walks of life, and all levels of internet use can access SocialProtect. We’ll also be building in education resources to enable people to keep their knowledge upto-date, be more informed, and better protected.” As the technology industry continues to break boundaries, new threats and problems continue to emerge. Shane explains, “Development forges ahead despite ethical, moral, and safety considerations. Technology will always run ahead of legislation, governance, and, in some instances, morality. It’s up to us as a society to embrace the tools, individuals, businesses, and agencies who are trying to keep us safe online. Generative AI has taken the eSafety landscape by storm, with deepfakes being used to create fake pornography and embarrassing clips. Our data, including vast amounts of personal data about our everyday lives, is being controlled by enormous multinational corporations who care little for anything beyond making a dollar from it.” SocialProtect aims to put the consumer back in control by offering one simple, upfront solution to the many problems facing social media and internet users. But having to rely on those same platforms to provide the company with the APIs it needs to operate without seeking further profit is another matter. Shane says, “The platforms often change access requirements and seek to charge tech start-ups like SocialProtect for this. We want to show people, clients, and nonclients alike that our goal is to protect them online, not to become rich at their expense. We want to be seen as a trusted and dependable brand.” Shane and the team would love to see SocialProtect available to everyone. Part of this initiative is that children and young adults are able to access the tool. As some of the biggest consumers of online material, it’s important that they have the understanding and resources to overcome the challenges they’re sure to face in this increasingly interconnected world. As a father of two himself, Shane is careful to balance his passion for driving SocialProtect’s ambition with his family life. He tells us, “I want my children to know me and to know that they are the most important part of my life. Without my incredible and supportive team, I wouldn’t be able to find that worklife balance. I rely on my team to be smarter, more capable, more effective, and more innovative than I am, and they haven’t disappointed me. They are extraordinary, and watching them grow has been one of the most rewarding and positive experiences of my career.” Looking to the future, Shane plans to continue on his personal development journey by applying for a PhD candidacy. To find out more about SocialProtect, visit the company website. Contact: Shane Britten Company: SocialProtect Web Address www.socialprotect.world/
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