Dear Teen Vogue, attention Hanna Howard,
I think you should get more into coding.
Following, is an elaboration of that.
I am one of your readers (Twitter and Web). I doubt that I am a typical reader: I am a grumpy middle aged man who works as a programmer in a science lab in a university in the North of England.
You are doing great work. I love your coverage of US politics. I love your coverage of privacy and online security.
I love the centre diversity and privilege in politics; I love the way you are representing women, people of colour, indigenous communities, lgbtq, and other traditionally less represented groups.
I even read some of your articles about Selena Gomez sometimes. As they say, come for the scorching politics, stay for the nail-art tips.
Let's talk about coding. Computer programming.
The tech industry is a trashfire, right? You've noticed that.
Uber and Susan Fowler. Gamergate and Zoe Quinn. Twitter bans Rose McGowan.
Lack of diversity in the industry means that it makes harmful products. This is not me saying this this, this is a widely held opinion.
Sex toys send your sex data to the vendor [1].
Kids toys record everything you say and send it to the vendor [2].
You can't get funding to make an app to track periods, because VCs are men [3].
Apple's (first) health app didn't have a way to track your periods [4].
A woman who miscarried still gets targetted ads and sent baby formula sample close to when she would have been full-term [5].
[1] Sex toys that send your good vibrations to the manufacturer.
[2] Toys record voice from kids and parents and keep it on servers ready to be leaked.
[3] You can't get VC funding for it
[4] Apple announced a Health App that didn't track periods.
[5] woman who miscarried gets sent baby formula close to when she would have been full-term.
Lack of representation and diversity in the tech community is harming your readers. It's harming everyone, but it's harming more the people I see you trying to support.
These are pretty negative examples, but there is positivity to be found in this sector. There are even NFC nail stickers.
The whole world is getting into coding, and it needs to (this is opinion, but it is widely held).
We can start to fix the problems by improving access to and diversity of the tech sector.
Django Girls, Code First: Girls, Trans Code, Black Girls Code. These are the organisations I know about, but there are hundreds and I am not an expert. There are voices there in your communities ready to be amplified.
You should pay attention to @evacide: https://twitter.com/evacide/status/861670872817389572
You already pay attention to @zeynep and that is a good thing (doing a better job than The Guardian).