October 30th, 2019: In a press conference today, Monica Lewinsky launched a Twitter account called @GoodnessBot. This account was established in September of this year and is designed to combat cyberbullying.

The account works by identifying negative and harassing words in a tweet and by substituting these with positive ones. All a user has to do is reply to a negative tweet by simply using the @GoodnessBot Twitter addy. At the end of the new positive reworded tweet, @GoodnessBot will add the tag #ClickWithCompassion.

Monica Lewinsky partnered with BBDO, a worldwide historical advertising network with its headquarters in New York City, to launch the account and begin this new campaign against cyberbullying. Ms. Lewinsky said that she drew inspiration from the kindness of strangers that she experienced years ago during the most difficult time of her life, for the idea about the @GoodnessBot.

Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern in the mid-90s and is currently an activist and a TV personality. Ms. Lewinsky became famous for having an affair, when she was only 22 years old, with the then president of the United Staes, Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton went on to be formally impeached for lying about his affair with Ms. Lewinsky.

Following the public exposure of the affair, Ms. Lewinsky became the target of harassment and bullying, which, she has said, continues to this day. Because of her experience with bullying and harassment, Ms. Lewinsky became passionate about campaigning against bullying and in particular cyberbullying.

In 2014, Ms. Lewinsky spoke publicly for the first time about cyberbullying in an interview for Forbes. She said that she felt like “patient zero” of online harassment. She also said that she wanted to help others survive the “shame game” and that she had been particularly influenced by the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student who had killed himself after being cyberbullied by his roommate, who had secretly recorded Tyler kiss another man. In March of 2015, Ms. Lewinsky gave a TED talk in which she talked about her story and called for more compassionate use of the internet.

The @GoodnessBot was launched only today, but by visiting the tag #ClickWithCompassion, one can get a sense that this campaign will go on to do real good on Twitter. Indeed, there are already several tweets of people using @GoodnessBot to turn negative and harassing tweets into positive ones. Give it a try!