4 ms·

Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can fol

by jdp23 16y ago

Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can follow from an account they check every single day. You want people to be able to find the latest information from their mobile phones. You have no money to spend and if you try to start an open source project or a company you'll probably be arrested. To me, Facebook (etc.) looks like a pretty good option in that situation. What alternatives would you suggest?

mayank 16y ago
> Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. Certainly, but you don't necessarily want to have that contact list easily available to anyone armed with a Javascript keylogger or a nightstick.
- jdp23 16y ago
  Exactly. If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. People can sign up to follow me if they want to be public about it, but don't have to. And the government got email passwords with its keystroke logging too.
  - cryptoz 16y ago
    > If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. But on Facebook, you do have a "Friends" list. That's the same thing as a contact list. If the government is keylogging for email passwords, they can keylog Facebook passwords too. Facebook isn't somehow "more secure" than email.
    - jdp23 16y ago
      but information I post on Facebook doesn't just go to my friends. i'm not arguing more or less secure; i'm arguing that the risk/effort/cost/benefit profiles are different, and in most situations for younger activists and audiences the balance favors Facebook.
cryptoz 16y ago
Email. > You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can follow from an account they check every single day. You want people to be able to find the latest information from their mobile phones. Email fits the bill here, 100%. Free, safe (SSL), distributed (choose any provider you like), anyone who has Facebook on their mobile device has email. Form big mailing lists, and send email around. Is there any particular reason that you think Facebook is better suited to this task than email?
- jdp23 16y ago
  Yes. Tunisian protestors repeatedly talked about Facebook's important role. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (unlike email) allows people to see updates without having to know about the email list. So that makes it much easier for a movement to get the word out beyond its core supporters and for like-minded people to find each other: "Oh look, my neighbor/colleague/second cousin just posted an article from Al Jazeera on Facebook. Funny, I didn't know she was political. Maybe we should talk." Most younger people these days do most of their news and communication via social network sites. As an activist, that's where you want to be. And about email's supposed advantages: > Free, If you have a server to host it, and the networking connectivity to get to it. What percentage of activists in Tunisa do? > safe (SSL) If you keep the server secure. > distributed (choose any provider you like) All Tunisian ISPs are owned by the government
  - mayank 16y ago
    I'd imagine posting on HN asking for an SSL secured server and forum/SN hosting for activists would find at least a few takers.
    - jdp23 16y ago
      maybe. How would they work together in a situation where communications are monitored and they don't have any language in common? How many Tunisian activists other than Slim know about HN? If somebody stepped forward, how would the activists know whether to trust them? Remember Haystack, where an American techie stepped forward and wrote anonymizing software to Iranian activists that turned out to have a major bug in it exposing them all to the government ... So, it's a reasonable suggestion, and I might try it next time I'm running an activist campaign. But Facebook looks like an easier alternative to me.
umtrey 16y ago
That's not the point - it may be the easiest for the users, but it's not the easiest for the entire system. The system is primarily made up of the hosts of the data, which would be these private companies who would rather not deal with any potential ramifications for helping out a political movement that is, by its nature, revolutionary. It's the right idea for the activists to use these mediums, but it should not be expected to work long-term.
- jdp23 16y ago
  With all due respect, you're not thinking like an activist. Facebook certainly discourages this kind of behavior: they don't allow pseudonymous accounts, and there have been repeated problems with them shutting down human rights pages and groups. But it's the easiest way to reach people. So activism strategies adapt accordingly. Back in 2009, for example, the key Mousavi Facebook page is run by somebody outside of Iran. Supporters who want to expose themselves publically can 'friend' the page and easily share information publically; but people who don't want to can view it without being on a list. Similar things are happening in Tunisia.
stcredzero 16y ago
Someone should package a distribution of Diaspora for easy hosting on the Amazon cloud with a utility for someone to indirectly export their friend network through Yahoo. There would be an email link going to a page which would ask for a password distributed by a secondary channel. One instance of such a site would be fairly easily penetrated by a government. However, if you divide up your organization based on strong personal relationships, you can require an adversary government to penetrate dozens or hundreds of such sites. (cells?) EDIT: Add Rackspace and Linode and whoever else can provide low-cost hosting. A government might shut down one hosting provider. Shutting down the top 10 might cripple an economy. EDIT: Also, use Google Voice as an SMS forwarder so that those without smartphones can at least have obfuscated comms. Or maybe a custom app with Twillio?
- jdp23 16y ago
  I agree that a distributed, secure, privacy-respectful social network would be very useful here for the activists to work together and am looking to the point where Appleseed, Diaspora et. al. are ready for it. It doesn't solve the same problem, though. Facebook is all about reaching people who aren't the core activists -- 600,000,000 people in the Diaspora universe yet.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Yes, but have them switch to something that Facebook or another single company can't shut down at the behest of some government. Another idea: Have such sites continually back themselves up to Amazon S3. This way, if a government does try some knucklehead move like banning Linnode, then people an just resurrect the site on another provider. (And chances are, a government besides the US won't be able to block network between that provider and S3.)

by jdp23 16y ago

mayank 16y ago

> Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. Certainly, but you don't necessarily want to have that contact list easily available to anyone armed with a Javascript keylogger or a nightstick.

jdp23 16y ago
Exactly. If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. People can sign up to follow me if they want to be public about it, but don't have to. And the government got email passwords with its keystroke logging too.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  > If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. But on Facebook, you do have a "Friends" list. That's the same thing as a contact list. If the government is keylogging for email passwords, they can keylog Facebook passwords too. Facebook isn't somehow "more secure" than email.
  - jdp23 16y ago
    but information I post on Facebook doesn't just go to my friends. i'm not arguing more or less secure; i'm arguing that the risk/effort/cost/benefit profiles are different, and in most situations for younger activists and audiences the balance favors Facebook.

cryptoz 16y ago

Email. > You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can follow from an account they check every single day. You want people to be able to find the latest information from their mobile phones. Email fits the bill here, 100%. Free, safe (SSL), distributed (choose any provider you like), anyone who has Facebook on their mobile device has email. Form big mailing lists, and send email around. Is there any particular reason that you think Facebook is better suited to this task than email?

jdp23 16y ago
Yes. Tunisian protestors repeatedly talked about Facebook's important role. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (unlike email) allows people to see updates without having to know about the email list. So that makes it much easier for a movement to get the word out beyond its core supporters and for like-minded people to find each other: "Oh look, my neighbor/colleague/second cousin just posted an article from Al Jazeera on Facebook. Funny, I didn't know she was political. Maybe we should talk." Most younger people these days do most of their news and communication via social network sites. As an activist, that's where you want to be. And about email's supposed advantages: > Free, If you have a server to host it, and the networking connectivity to get to it. What percentage of activists in Tunisa do? > safe (SSL) If you keep the server secure. > distributed (choose any provider you like) All Tunisian ISPs are owned by the government
- mayank 16y ago
  I'd imagine posting on HN asking for an SSL secured server and forum/SN hosting for activists would find at least a few takers.
  - jdp23 16y ago
    maybe. How would they work together in a situation where communications are monitored and they don't have any language in common? How many Tunisian activists other than Slim know about HN? If somebody stepped forward, how would the activists know whether to trust them? Remember Haystack, where an American techie stepped forward and wrote anonymizing software to Iranian activists that turned out to have a major bug in it exposing them all to the government ... So, it's a reasonable suggestion, and I might try it next time I'm running an activist campaign. But Facebook looks like an easier alternative to me.

umtrey 16y ago

That's not the point - it may be the easiest for the users, but it's not the easiest for the entire system. The system is primarily made up of the hosts of the data, which would be these private companies who would rather not deal with any potential ramifications for helping out a political movement that is, by its nature, revolutionary. It's the right idea for the activists to use these mediums, but it should not be expected to work long-term.

jdp23 16y ago
With all due respect, you're not thinking like an activist. Facebook certainly discourages this kind of behavior: they don't allow pseudonymous accounts, and there have been repeated problems with them shutting down human rights pages and groups. But it's the easiest way to reach people. So activism strategies adapt accordingly. Back in 2009, for example, the key Mousavi Facebook page is run by somebody outside of Iran. Supporters who want to expose themselves publically can 'friend' the page and easily share information publically; but people who don't want to can view it without being on a list. Similar things are happening in Tunisia.

stcredzero 16y ago

Someone should package a distribution of Diaspora for easy hosting on the Amazon cloud with a utility for someone to indirectly export their friend network through Yahoo. There would be an email link going to a page which would ask for a password distributed by a secondary channel. One instance of such a site would be fairly easily penetrated by a government. However, if you divide up your organization based on strong personal relationships, you can require an adversary government to penetrate dozens or hundreds of such sites. (cells?) EDIT: Add Rackspace and Linode and whoever else can provide low-cost hosting. A government might shut down one hosting provider. Shutting down the top 10 might cripple an economy. EDIT: Also, use Google Voice as an SMS forwarder so that those without smartphones can at least have obfuscated comms. Or maybe a custom app with Twillio?

jdp23 16y ago
I agree that a distributed, secure, privacy-respectful social network would be very useful here for the activists to work together and am looking to the point where Appleseed, Diaspora et. al. are ready for it. It doesn't solve the same problem, though. Facebook is all about reaching people who aren't the core activists -- 600,000,000 people in the Diaspora universe yet.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Yes, but have them switch to something that Facebook or another single company can't shut down at the behest of some government. Another idea: Have such sites continually back themselves up to Amazon S3. This way, if a government does try some knucklehead move like banning Linnode, then people an just resurrect the site on another provider. (And chances are, a government besides the US won't be able to block network between that provider and S3.)