| Handout.odt | ||
| README.md | ||
Decentralized Tools for Activists
Sources
These websites are great to compare different software solutions, and help you choosing free alternatives over proprietary.
This very good article is analyzing why GAFAM is a problem:
Reasons for this workshop
Why?
- we want more people to use decentralized tools for political action
- it makes their activism more effective
- decentralized services are more resilient, don't support the monopolies, and are important for privacy
- decentralized services require some extra knowledge
- big tech's monopoly is creating a cyberpunk dystopia
What?
- make people aware of the problem
- teach people how to use the alternatives (effectively)
- it would be great if they can spread the knowledge afterwards
How?
- a workshop on how to use them
- directly trying them out?
- stories on why this is important
- how to find an instance?
The Problem: Monopolies
Tech monopolies gain more and more power
- their means of production are user data
- selling advertisements
- knowledge is power:
- manipulating elections
- mass surveillance
- influencing customers
- repression
- and we don't know how they can use the data in the future
- most of these services are monopolys; this way they can exploit the data
- Segmenting: much easier to find people who are interested than with conventional advertising
- Deception: easier to find people who are easy to deceive, power to withhold information from people
- Domination: monopoly over all sources of information of a person
- Mind Control techniques?
- there are some tricks which manipulate decision making: e.g. auctions, countdowns on purchase websites, "your friends bought this", gameistic addiction tricks
- Not very effective: most people adapt to techniques like that quickly. Only a fraction of people, those who can't adapt, can be manipulated for longer
- network effects + user lock-in: the more users they have, the more they want
stories?
Bad Examples:
biggest tech companies: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft
eBay, PayPal, Twitter, YouTube (Google), ...
Decentralized
- But there are alternatives
- Decentralized services
- not owned by a single company
- everyone can set up their own server
- interoperable; the servers can federate with each other
- Also important: Free Software/Open Source
- everyone is able to use, read, edit, share the source code -> trustworthy