5 ms·

No, it's not fighting back. Making clever memes online to earn a chuckle or two might help spreading awareness, but in reality changing an online avatar and pos

by niuzeta 13y ago

No, it's not fighting back. Making clever memes online to earn a chuckle or two might help spreading awareness, but in reality changing an online avatar and posting memes online won't affect much in real life. What I find strange is that(Please correct me on this one) there just doesn't seem to be a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians. In truth, technology-related policies should be consulted and heard by people who use and develop the said technologies. What's worse about this retaliation is that anyone participating it would have an illusion of having done something without actually having done anything(i.e., impact). At the end of the day, you might walk home feeling good about yourself for having fought for a cause, but some harsh reality check needs to be done. Addendum: As per the second paragraph, refer to one of the replies on this comment(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7038058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7038058): > An abbreviated list of groups who do that: EFF, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Engine Advocacy, CDT, OTI, Free Press. Many of these have multiple registered lobbyists walking the halls of Congress and taking meetings. I stand corrected.

anigbrowl 13y ago
a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians Excuse my pedantry, but I think the need is not so much to lobby against politicians (which is to implicitly reject the concept of a polity and go for an everyone-for-themselves model instead), but to lobby against competing interests. In short, technologists need to lobby for their interests more effectively, which will mean doing a better job of articulating what our interests are, and why others should accept some crimping of their interests for the greater good. One recent and good example of this is the observation that compromising privacy limits our ability to export hardware and software and thus comes at an economic cost to taxpayers.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
salient 13y ago
I'm pretty sure EFF, DemandProgress and the like are doing exactly that. Or are you saying they should form a Super PAC? But in that case, it won't exactly be "traditional lobbying", would it? It would be just paying politicians to do what they're asking them. I don't know whether that would be good or bad given the current corrupt lobbying system that the government has gotten accustomed to, but at least we should call it what it is before we dive in.
- niuzeta 13y ago
  > What I find strange is that (Please correct me on this one) there just doesn't seem to be a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians. Thank you. As I've stated I am rather ignorant of such groups. I stand corrected.
sinak 13y ago
You're wrong about the lack of groups who lobby. An abbreviated list of groups who do that: EFF, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Engine Advocacy, CDT, OTI, Free Press. Many of these have multiple registered lobbyists walking the halls of Congress and taking meetings. I've actually done this myself too, on my pet issue of cell phone unlocking, with the help of a lobbyist from D.C. Unfortunately, most of these groups, bar the EFF, are almost completely known in silicon valley and the tech community. There are likely many reasons for that, but two that often get called out are the distance between San Francisco and DC (culturally and physically), and a libertarian bent amongst many technology. The goal of this is campaign is to drive calls to Congress on 02/11, making clever memes is simply the vector by which we spread word of the campaign. Calls do very much have an effect on how representatives vote. For evidence of this I highly recommend reading the Communicating with Congress series of studies by the Congressional Management Foundation [1]. Alternatively, ask who has worked as a staffer: calls make a big difference. It's so very, very easy to be cynical about this kind of thing, but it's a trap. It's weird to quote Plato, but he sums it up pretty well: "The chief penalty [of good people who refuse to lead] is to be governed by someone worse." [1] http://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-with-congress http://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-wit...
- ilaksh 13y ago
  I would really like to believe that calls to Congress make a difference.
  - salient 13y ago
    They did with SOPA. Because there were millions of them. But how do millions of phones calls get sent? By having each and everyone of us calling.
- niuzeta 13y ago
  > > What I find strange is that (Please correct me on this one) there just doesn't seem to be a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians. As I've stated I am rather ignorant of such groups. I stand corrected. Now, awareness of those groups should be more spread, wouldn't you agree?
l33tbro 13y ago
No. Why is achievement in our culture positioned to always be this 3-act epic like we have to slay the bad guy? try rethinking your approach here and accept that it is actually totally fine to walk home at the end of the day and celebrate a small victory. There are indeed technology consultants that inform these govt policy: they're called lobbyists and their influence is often proportional to how much their self-interest will prosper. this is why the system doesn't work and Hacker's like Aaron need to step in. None of us believe we'll walk away from this having fixed anything, it is an ongoing process to keep the system in check. The point, however, is to simply concentrate our anger and focus over a month into, as a hacker, doing SOMETHING proactive against this.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Small victory What victory? Keep what in check? Opinions without objective consequences don't matter.
- niuzeta 13y ago
  > it is actually totally fine to walk home at the end of the day and celebrate a small victory. It is fine to walk home and celebrate a small victory. It may not be fine to walk home and celebrate a victory, however small, when that victory is nothing but an illusion. Exactly what kind of victory will this movement achieve? From what I can tell it's another let's-feel-good-about-ourselves-by-shouting-at-same-time. It makes you feel great, sure, but in the end what have you achieved? Two child comments from my comment have corrected me of groups who are fighting back. Perhaps a donation? Spreading awareness of the groups? A political motion needs to happen continuously. A day's worth party may be fun, but in the end it's a party. People walk home and do not follow.
- tunap 13y ago
  Not just mere lobbyists, they are 'insiders' who make the right people boatloads of money. They become "Board members" and/or consultants &/or get appointed to seats of power away from the cameras. Hell, they draft the laws that the puppet/script-readers introduce & vote on with much pomp & flourish... or surreptitiously, whatever suits their interests best. I don't know any but one name on this list, but a quick check leads me to believe we're screwed. DHS Data Privacy Board Members list from '09: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:b2EYh7XqbaUJ:http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy_dpiac_meeting%2520summary_20090226.pdf%2B%22Data+Privacy+and+Integrity+Advisory+Committee%22+freeman&hl=en&biw=&bih=&gbv=1&ct=clnk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:b2EYh7... Chairman Howard Beals has no conflict of interest, I suppose: http://www.itif.org/publications/stricter-privacy-regulations-online-advertising-will-harm-free-internet http://www.itif.org/publications/stricter-privacy-regulation... D. Reed Freeman, ex-CPO of Gator Networks will fight for YOUR right to privacy, I'm sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation I'm also pretty sure a majority of people here @ HN will defend THEIR practices of collecting metrics, too. What's the difference? USGuv was tasked to protect & they took it too far, IMO. The Corps, privates & independents with knowledge, coding skills & processing power are tracking for profit... and have taken it too far, IMO.
nubbee 13y ago
I agree. The biggest threat to our rights is neither politics nor three letter agencies it's our own passivity. We would benefit more from a movement rather than an event.
steauengeglase 13y ago
Awareness is good for stopping bad things that are coming down the pipe, but it pretty worthless for getting rid of bad things that are already in place. To change the entrenched you need big industry players behind you and a willingness as a customer to lose something in the exchange for their new benefit.
boyaka 13y ago
Yeah, did you even click on the link and try to understand before you made your original post? Aaron Swartz, the face being used for this movement who fought back, was behind the creation of reddit. He is much more involved with these technology-related policies than 99% of those Google, Verizon, etc. policy makers.
- niuzeta 13y ago
  Please tell me again how this call to action has to do with Aaron Swartz other than the fact that the front page has his picture of him.
  - boyaka 13y ago
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ194S7KjRg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ194S7KjRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3izOJ7zX5I0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3izOJ7zX5I0 This is an opinion: They killed him.

by niuzeta 13y ago

anigbrowl 13y ago

a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians Excuse my pedantry, but I think the need is not so much to lobby against politicians (which is to implicitly reject the concept of a polity and go for an everyone-for-themselves model instead), but to lobby against competing interests. In short, technologists need to lobby for their interests more effectively, which will mean doing a better job of articulating what our interests are, and why others should accept some crimping of their interests for the greater good. One recent and good example of this is the observation that compromising privacy limits our ability to export hardware and software and thus comes at an economic cost to taxpayers.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

salient 13y ago

I'm pretty sure EFF, DemandProgress and the like are doing exactly that. Or are you saying they should form a Super PAC? But in that case, it won't exactly be "traditional lobbying", would it? It would be just paying politicians to do what they're asking them. I don't know whether that would be good or bad given the current corrupt lobbying system that the government has gotten accustomed to, but at least we should call it what it is before we dive in.

niuzeta 13y ago
> What I find strange is that (Please correct me on this one) there just doesn't seem to be a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians. Thank you. As I've stated I am rather ignorant of such groups. I stand corrected.

sinak 13y ago

You're wrong about the lack of groups who lobby. An abbreviated list of groups who do that: EFF, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Engine Advocacy, CDT, OTI, Free Press. Many of these have multiple registered lobbyists walking the halls of Congress and taking meetings. I've actually done this myself too, on my pet issue of cell phone unlocking, with the help of a lobbyist from D.C. Unfortunately, most of these groups, bar the EFF, are almost completely known in silicon valley and the tech community. There are likely many reasons for that, but two that often get called out are the distance between San Francisco and DC (culturally and physically), and a libertarian bent amongst many technology. The goal of this is campaign is to drive calls to Congress on 02/11, making clever memes is simply the vector by which we spread word of the campaign. Calls do very much have an effect on how representatives vote. For evidence of this I highly recommend reading the Communicating with Congress series of studies by the Congressional Management Foundation [1]. Alternatively, ask who has worked as a staffer: calls make a big difference. It's so very, very easy to be cynical about this kind of thing, but it's a trap. It's weird to quote Plato, but he sums it up pretty well: "The chief penalty [of good people who refuse to lead] is to be governed by someone worse." [1] http://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-with-congress http://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-wit...

ilaksh 13y ago
I would really like to believe that calls to Congress make a difference.
- salient 13y ago
  They did with SOPA. Because there were millions of them. But how do millions of phones calls get sent? By having each and everyone of us calling.
niuzeta 13y ago
> > What I find strange is that (Please correct me on this one) there just doesn't seem to be a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians. As I've stated I am rather ignorant of such groups. I stand corrected. Now, awareness of those groups should be more spread, wouldn't you agree?

l33tbro 13y ago

No. Why is achievement in our culture positioned to always be this 3-act epic like we have to slay the bad guy? try rethinking your approach here and accept that it is actually totally fine to walk home at the end of the day and celebrate a small victory. There are indeed technology consultants that inform these govt policy: they're called lobbyists and their influence is often proportional to how much their self-interest will prosper. this is why the system doesn't work and Hacker's like Aaron need to step in. None of us believe we'll walk away from this having fixed anything, it is an ongoing process to keep the system in check. The point, however, is to simply concentrate our anger and focus over a month into, as a hacker, doing SOMETHING proactive against this.

ctdonath 13y ago
Small victory What victory? Keep what in check? Opinions without objective consequences don't matter.
niuzeta 13y ago
> it is actually totally fine to walk home at the end of the day and celebrate a small victory. It is fine to walk home and celebrate a small victory. It may not be fine to walk home and celebrate a victory, however small, when that victory is nothing but an illusion. Exactly what kind of victory will this movement achieve? From what I can tell it's another let's-feel-good-about-ourselves-by-shouting-at-same-time. It makes you feel great, sure, but in the end what have you achieved? Two child comments from my comment have corrected me of groups who are fighting back. Perhaps a donation? Spreading awareness of the groups? A political motion needs to happen continuously. A day's worth party may be fun, but in the end it's a party. People walk home and do not follow.
tunap 13y ago
Not just mere lobbyists, they are 'insiders' who make the right people boatloads of money. They become "Board members" and/or consultants &/or get appointed to seats of power away from the cameras. Hell, they draft the laws that the puppet/script-readers introduce & vote on with much pomp & flourish... or surreptitiously, whatever suits their interests best. I don't know any but one name on this list, but a quick check leads me to believe we're screwed. DHS Data Privacy Board Members list from '09: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:b2EYh7XqbaUJ:http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy_dpiac_meeting%2520summary_20090226.pdf%2B%22Data+Privacy+and+Integrity+Advisory+Committee%22+freeman&hl=en&biw=&bih=&gbv=1&ct=clnk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:b2EYh7... Chairman Howard Beals has no conflict of interest, I suppose: http://www.itif.org/publications/stricter-privacy-regulations-online-advertising-will-harm-free-internet http://www.itif.org/publications/stricter-privacy-regulation... D. Reed Freeman, ex-CPO of Gator Networks will fight for YOUR right to privacy, I'm sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation I'm also pretty sure a majority of people here @ HN will defend THEIR practices of collecting metrics, too. What's the difference? USGuv was tasked to protect & they took it too far, IMO. The Corps, privates & independents with knowledge, coding skills & processing power are tracking for profit... and have taken it too far, IMO.

nubbee 13y ago

I agree. The biggest threat to our rights is neither politics nor three letter agencies it's our own passivity. We would benefit more from a movement rather than an event.

steauengeglase 13y ago

Awareness is good for stopping bad things that are coming down the pipe, but it pretty worthless for getting rid of bad things that are already in place. To change the entrenched you need big industry players behind you and a willingness as a customer to lose something in the exchange for their new benefit.

boyaka 13y ago

Yeah, did you even click on the link and try to understand before you made your original post? Aaron Swartz, the face being used for this movement who fought back, was behind the creation of reddit. He is much more involved with these technology-related policies than 99% of those Google, Verizon, etc. policy makers.

niuzeta 13y ago
Please tell me again how this call to action has to do with Aaron Swartz other than the fact that the front page has his picture of him.
- boyaka 13y ago
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ194S7KjRg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ194S7KjRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3izOJ7zX5I0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3izOJ7zX5I0 This is an opinion: They killed him.