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by Bee Rosa Davis (Author)
A first-of-its-kind book from the front lines of tech, law, and survival.
Part memoir, part legal manifesto, and part forensic indictment, Motion to Be Seen is a powerful reckoning with algorithmic violence and the systems that allow it to flourish.
Bee Davis-a NASA engineer, security architect, ballroom house mother, and mother of three-wrote this book while fighting one of the most powerful queer dating apps in federal court. In a case that has never before been heard, she challenges the platform's use of forced arbitration, its failure to prevent algorithmic harm, and the legal architecture that keeps queer and trans survivors locked out of justice.
What begins as a motion to be heard becomes something greater: a motion to be remembered, to be protected, to be human in a system that was never built for us.
At the heart of the book is Davis's groundbreaking Algorithmic Proximate Harm Detection (APHD) framework-an original forensic model for identifying and proving algorithmic harm in court. Drawing from cybersecurity, data science, and tort law, APHD brings measurable structure to what platforms often dismiss as "anecdotal" harm. Through nine rigorously defined variables, including centrality, escalation velocity, inaction decay, and platform negligence, Davis reframes user harm as forensically traceable and legally actionable.
But Motion to Be Seen is more than a technical document. It's a record of those we've lost: Black trans women whose names were misgendered, whose deaths were uncounted, and whose lives were never safe online. It's about systems that claim neutrality while engineering exposure to violence. And it's about a woman who refused to stay silent-because silence was never an option.
"I didn't have a law degree or a publishing deal. I had grief, receipts, and a moral obligation. I filed the motion-and then I wrote the book."
With sharp legal reasoning, personal clarity, and systems-level insight, Bee Davis issues a challenge to courts, platforms, and the public:
If this harm can be measured, it can be prosecuted. If it can be prosecuted, it can no longer be ignored.You'll learn:
How algorithms escalate harm, especially against marginalized users
Why forced arbitration clauses shield platforms from accountability
How to identify design-based negligence using forensic telemetry
What it means to survive-and still refuse silence
What comes after filing a motion, when the whole system is watching
For readers of:
Weapons of Math Destruction, Algorithms of Oppression, The New Jim Code, Sister Outsider, Nobody's Victim, How to Stay Safe Online, and all who believe digital justice is civil rights justice.
