This is a well written call to action: bullet points, concise headings, simple language, links to examples and reasoning.

It beats the usual manifestos that get posted.

That is a lot of text. But the bit that jumped out at me was:

But if you need a tool to communicate privately with your friends and family–even if your chats are boring, mundane, and totally legal–Signal is the best damn choice I can recommend.

And I trust them, because they bedazzled their essay with lots of furry art. Like an excessive amount. So they either know what they’re talking about or it’s a mid-effort psyop.

WikiTree is popular in my circles. I’m not sure if there’s a significant difference from Family Echo.

What is Family Echo? Why is it better than other free genealogy databases?

Are these cables just for use by Meta properties, or will they sell access to other orgs?

Apparently Google (or maybe Alphabet?) also has a bunch of undersea cables. It looks like those are for just by Google Cloud customers (and presumably) Google itself.

It clearly isn’t open source, but on Pixel devices, swiping up to the switcher, and then tapping the image is enough to open Lens and get the URL.

Seems like a pretty huge opportunity for Reddit. If the article mentioned it, I missed it.

I’m surprised they aren’t talking about subscriber subreddits. With the amount of porn/OnlyFans posts, I would have thought they could position Reddit as a friendly and familiar OF alternative.

Citizen Lab is a national treasure. I really enjoy reading about what they do.

That wouldn’t stop a true ethical hacker

tbf, those systems are now effectively haunted

I guess mel isn’t going to use you for their self hosting needs either, then.

One of the problems with online forums for organizing is that it’s hard to naturally build an organizational structure. It’s possible, but I think it requires experienced organizers to start choosing collaborators from the userbase.

• in online forums, people get upvoted based on how much users agree with the comment. They are rewarded for being popular, not for having a direct impact on the problem being discussed.
• IRL people who commit effort to the cause get a certain amount of social capital, and the satisfaction of having an effect. They also form social bonds with other people in the group. Participants are rewarded for having an effect.

We haven’t seen a lot of organizing boiling out of the existing forums (Reddit, Facebook, blogs) and microblogging (Twitter) platforms. There have been a bunch of leaderless movements, like #metoo and BLM, but those have had a moment and then faded out. If they were effective tools for organizing, I would expect to see more organizations come out of them and persist.

Conversely, volunteer community organizations form all the time - people are physically situated near people experiencing similar problems who are invested in solutions they think will work for their community. In-person organization is self perpetuating in the sense that there is an inherent reward for having an effect.

I think it’s possible to use online tools to create a movement, but like the author of the article says, most of us spend our time posting and upvoting rather than doing something that will change policy.

when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.

The fediverse is great, but the problem is that it isn’t organizing. It isn’t mobilizing people to scare politicians and businesses into behaving better.