[liberationtech] Fwd: Liberation Tech would like a word.

Tue Apr 23 04:40:30 CEST 2024

Hi everyone,

I joined the list out of sheer curiosity after watching Mr. Robot. Am an
ex-journalist and communications manager turned education entrepreneur.

We run a business training digital skills based in Singapore and Malaysia.

Happy to connect via https://www.linkedin.com/in/daylonsoh/

On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 4:43 AM Kate Krauss <katiephr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Lorelei,
>
> Wow--I have never thought about the right to petition or the idea that
> Facebook is an ad-based grievance processing platform.  I am fascinated by
> these civic tech tools, especially pol.is.
>
> Pol.is basically runs huge town meetings and helps people build consensus
> over political divides. The US desperately needs to try these tools, and
> it's great to hear that you are working on this for US Congress.
>
> Taiwan uses them; I'm hoping to drag Audrey Tang, the brilliant digital
> minister of Taiwan who is an open-source hacker, onto this list. I
> wrote the piece below about civic tech in Taiwan and Estonia a few years
> ago. The text might be a little rosy (Audrey should come on the list and
> say if it is!) but it talks about some civic tech tools that people might
> not be familiar with. And it is long; feel free to skip it.
>
> -Kate Krauss
>
> *Tl;dr: Long opinion piece walks through civic tech as enacted in two very
> clever countries*
>
> Taiwan withstands intense hacking and disinformation from the Chinese
> government (right next door), yet it has managed to build an ecosystem of
> inventive and useful tools that outmaneuver its more powerful neighbor.
>
>
> To counter disinformation, Taiwanese volunteers created CoFacts
> <https://cofacts.g0v.tw/> (Collaborative Facts), a chatbot that allows
> people to ask questions about internet rumors without leaving their
> messaging app. Users instantly receive an even-handed analysis of what is
> true and false about the rumor, researched by vetted fact checkers similar
> to Wikipedia editors.
>
>
> Pol.is <https://pol.is/home> is an online platform that builds
> understanding between people with opposing views.* Developed in Seattle
> [!]* but fine-tuned for Taiwan, the platform allows people to present
> their own solutions to political problems, adding to and editing them to
> improve the ideas and find consensus. (Pol.is also had a successful trial
> run in Bowling Green, Kentucky town meetings.)
>
>
> A Taiwanese tool called “Government Budget Maps” compares federal budget
> items to the price of lunch boxes, bubble tea, or space travel so that
> people can wrap their minds around the cost. Citizens are then invited to
> review and rate each item.
>
>
> These ideas, and many others, have emerged from Taiwan’s large and vibrant
> culture of civic hacking--a movement of volunteers, known as G0V
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G0v>, who work together to develop and
> adapt open source tools that advance democracy and keep the government
> accountable.  G0V is building out *nonprofit* civic space.  People can
> voice their opinions, but no one is trying to keep them on a platform at
> any cost, enrage them with false information, or introduce them to Nazis.
>
>
> Other countries are also innovating to evade trouble online. Estonia, the
> tiny democracy wedged between Russia and the Baltic Sea, has fought back
> <https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0204/Cybersecurity-2020-What-Estonia-knows-about-thwarting-Russians>
> against Russia's hacking of its bank, government agencies, press, and power
> grid. Advocates formed the CyberDefense League, enlisting hundreds of
> volunteers--teachers, lawyers, software developers, even priests--to
> protect the country from Russian cyberattacks. The CyberDefense League
> organizes emergency drills--fake disasters--that teach the government and
> citizenry how to prepare for, and counter, cyberattacks. They also teach
> ordinary people to protect themselves online.
>
>
> Estonia convinced NATO to run joint cyberdefense exercises, drawing
> thousands of participants from more than two dozen countries. The country named
> an ambassador-at-large
> <https://govinsider.asia/cyber-futures/heli-tiirmaa-klaar-lessons-from-estonias-cyber-ambassador/>
> for cybersecurity in 2018 (Taiwan has a digital minister). Every highschool
> student in Estonia is required to enroll in a 35-hour class on media and
> disinformation.
>
>
> These strategies are working: When Russia hacked the Ukraine in a 2017
> attack that spread to 64 other countries, Estonia was largely untouched.
> [I wrote this in 2020 so not sure how Estonia is doing now -Kate]
>
>
> In the US, open source civic hacking groups have made inroads in
> streamlining US government processes [go, Lorelei!], but for-profit
> companies still dominate the public square.
>
>
> [My obvious point] Americans lack nonprofit, large-scale, online civic
> space in which to discuss ideas, read articles, or watch videos without
> being manipulated by profit-making algorithms. Instead, Facebook and others
> send us content that provokes us, because research shows this keeps us
> online. The longer we scroll, the more information we reveal that the
> company can monetize for ads.  Facebook alone made $134 billion this way in
> 2023.
>
>
>
> So what can the US do? We must move open source, nonprofit,
> democracy-oriented software projects from the sidelines to the center of
> American life and its public square. Congress, which already funds some
> software development—and private foundations—can scale up funding and
> promote projects that support everything from civic hackathons to
> publicly-minded discussion platforms.
>
>
> Facebook was never built to promote democracy. The company’s central value
> and operating principle has always been growth--to get as big as possible
> as fast as possible. Rather than speculating about Facebook’s latest
> content moderation disaster [although actually we have to do that] or
> analyze Mark Zuckerberg’s personality, let’s learn from other countries
> that prioritize nonprofit, online civic life.
>
> ---
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 3:42 PM Lorelei Kelly <loreleikelly at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> hi, seeing if this thread goes through this time!
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: Lorelei Kelly <loreleikelly at gmail.com>
>> Date: Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 3:00 PM
>> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Liberation Tech would like a word.
>> To: Kate Krauss <katiephr at gmail.com>
>> Cc: liberationtech <liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
>>
>>
>> deliberative technology could take many different forms pol.is  remesh,
>> Zoom, Cortico Fora...online Town Hall Models, Citizen Assemblies, mini
>> publics...
>> what's interesting to me is how the Right to petition function of
>> Congress (First Amendment duty) was basically offshored in the 1940s to the
>> Executive Branch, thereby depriving Congress of its internal barometer of
>> the American people-- it gave the President power at the expense of the
>> legislature, and allowed the public grievance processing space to languish
>> or be privatized (Facebook).   Now much access is purchased via
>> lobbying...and advocacy... the rest of us are left to vote occasionally or
>> protest or spiral into frustration and even apathy (very dangerous)...
>> Grievance processing on top of an advertising platform is one of the major
>> drivers of dysfunction IMHO. And that's not even mentioning the Putin ad
>> buys.   It has been a disaster for democracy, but specifically for
>> institutions like Congress whose communications standards were literally
>> stuck in the Pony Express until 2020.  Here's an article that explains
>> <https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/3985778-to-protect-democracy-from-machines-congress-must-modernize-our-constitutional-right-to-petition/>this
>> big picture framing.
>>
>> We have to actually change alot of laborious and byzantine rules, even
>> laws to allow Congress to function in the modern world.  It has many
>> pockets of Civil War era technology like an 1860s document format.  Fixing
>> this is an institutional long game--the Right Wing has been much more
>> successful at eliminating public infrastructure and then
>> occupying/capturing it, selling it off to friends and cronies or
>> corporations (or flooding the zone with shit aka Bannon's plan)   The Left,
>> as far as I can tell has no competitive institutional plan.  Centrists tend
>> to not be supported by outside or adjacent orgs.
>>
>> our dysfunction re: tech and institutions is partly because the first
>> generation of technologies on social media fit into campaigning needs, not
>> governing, which requires slow moving, slow thinking and deliberation.
>> Its one reason why governing looks like campaigning now. The whole
>> incentive system is streamlined for it.  Citizens United in 2010 allowed
>> unlimited dark money into the blood stream of democracy.  We have to change
>> this incentive.  Americans need to fall in love with their governing
>> institutions again. They are so beleaguered and brittle.   And this needs
>> to be paid for by taxpayer dollars,facilitated by philanthropy,  not
>> privatized.   Democracy is not a pro bono project or a side gig  that you
>> think about while building a Mars rocket-- Scorn for institutions is one of
>> the reasons I left Silicon Valley (where I was born!)  and have never
>> looked back.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 1:10 PM Kate Krauss <katiephr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This is so interesting. Thanks for sharing your fascinating insights
>>> into the dynamics right now in US Congress. I can't believe we've found an
>>> optimist! :)
>>>
>>> What sorts of things are you working on in this regard: "how to
>>> integrate new forms of deliberative technology into the workflow of members
>>> so there is a flow of authentic, productive, constituent driven feedback."
>>> What sorts of deliberative technology?
>>>
>>> In modernizing, what kinds of unmodern things go wrong, and what
>>> direction are you going in fixing them? Also very interested to hear about
>>> AI and LLMs in the House (seems like a Saturday Night Live skit, but also,
>>> the future!).
>>>
>>> Thanks again,
>>>
>>> -Kate
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 12:33 PM Lorelei Kelly <loreleikelly at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> hi, thanks for the note.
>>>> I'm glad to see this list momentum effort!  We need it!
>>>> I lead the modernizing Congress portfolio at Georgetown and I'm still
>>>> working adjacent to the US Congress with the members and committees who are
>>>> behind this effort-- The House has passed 202 reform and modernization
>>>> recommendations. It is truly an unprecedented and historic push forward.
>>>> I'm now helping implement the more difficult ones that include a social
>>>> cohesion aspect. (i.e. how to we integrate new forms of deliberative
>>>> technology into the workflow of members so there is a flow of authentic,
>>>> productive, constituent driven feedback)  Also we have gotten ahead of the
>>>> curve on AI and LLMs in the House at least. I'm proud of this old
>>>> institution, even though its looking like a three ring circus in the news.
>>>> I think the Mike Johnson success on Ukraine funding is a very interesting
>>>> turning point for looking at democracy as transcendent critical
>>>> infrastructure (backed up by pandemic measures to go remote and then J6
>>>> reactions to look at the information systems on Capitol Hill as national
>>>> security priorities)  We have begun to marginalize deviant behavior through
>>>> the process and this is a good, emergent, systems way to make sense of it.
>>>> Very interesting time for all of this.
>>>> LK
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 12:19 PM Kate Krauss <katiephr at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi!
>>>>>
>>>>> We didn't move the list, or change its name (Liberation Tech) but we
>>>>> did supply a link which works (after fixing a technical glitch) that you
>>>>> can share with new people who might want to join.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>
>>>>> Kate
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 12:12 PM Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One
>>>>> Victim & Survivor of Many <gmkarl at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> > > Hi, I’m confused, what about the list this email was sent to (
>>>>>> lt at lists.liberationtech.org) ?
>>>>>> > >
>>>>>> > > What does the “subscribe” link in this email have to do with that
>>>>>> list?
>>>>>> > >
>>>>>> > > Is it a different list? The same list? Is
>>>>>> lt at lists.liberationtech.org still alive or being moved?
>>>>>> > >
>>>>>> > > Very confused,
>>>>>> > > Greg
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > I'd like to relate that some communities have been both disrupted
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> > defended by influences skilled in social manipulation, and that one
>>>>>> > attribute of that is changing the environment.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Changing an environment can help change, whether overt or covert, be
>>>>>> > adopted more readily. It can separate both from harm and fear as
>>>>>> well
>>>>>> > as familiarity and community.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > It's pleasant that changing the list name could help people feel
>>>>>> safer
>>>>>> > from any trauma associated with the old list, and help anything
>>>>>> > targeting the old list have a little trouble finding the new people.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > I hope that everybody who was affiliated with the old list succeeds
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> > finding the new one, but I know there will be people who don't.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Some communities often have to move in order to survive well. This
>>>>>> > does sadly often mean leaving people behind.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Crazy Karl (I think I have OSDD from technologically-facilitated
>>>>>> abuse!)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Apologies, I did not realize it was the _same_ list the subscribe link
>>>>>> was sent to.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I had assumed by context that this was a new list.
>>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
>>>>> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
>>>>> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
>>>>> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
>>>>> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> *Lorelei KellyResearch Lead, Congressional Modernization
>>>> <https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/project/modernizing-congress/>*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *Founder, Georgetown Democracy, Education + Service (GeoDES)*
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> *Lorelei KellyResearch Lead, Congressional Modernization
>> <https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/project/modernizing-congress/>*
>>
>>
>>
>> *Founder, Georgetown Democracy, Education + Service (GeoDES)*
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> *Lorelei KellyResearch Lead, Congressional Modernization
>> <https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/project/modernizing-congress/>*
>>
>>
>>
>> *Founder, Georgetown Democracy, Education + Service (GeoDES)*
>>
>> --
>> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
>> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
>> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
>> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
>> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
>>
> --
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you
> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe,
> change to digest mode, or change password by emailing
> lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
>

-- 

Warmest Regards

Daylon Soh

Founder & General Manager

<https://curiouscore.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=email>

Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Rd, #15-09
Singapore 199589

Tel: 6591 8672

* <http://curiouscore.com/>curiouscore.com*

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<https://atc.sg/sme-500-business-promising-entrepreneur-singapore-emerging-brand-award.php>
 & Spirit of Enterprise <https://soe.org.sg/soe-awards/> Awards
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