A surveillance pandemic? A community listening session on emergent post-COVID trends, from contact tracking to special powers

Great and all, but Zoom? Really? Iā€™m out, that being the case. I am seeing too much of this, from Naomi Klein and the Intercept putting everything out on YouTube to The Guardian talking about modern masculinity on the same platform which has done as much as any to lead to toxic masculinityā€¦ Please consider Jitsi Meet. It is very easy to use, I have seen it used for conferences, and, though self-hosting is the most secure option, it is, unlike Zoom (who lied about it) end-to-end encrypted.

1 Like

I respect your position. We are already testing several solutions, including Jitsi, Big Blue Button and https://now.edgeryders.eu. But tests will not be exhaustive in a week. So, we have chosen the devil we know and the minimization of the time spent asking each other ā€œcan you hear me? can you seee me? wait, I am going to leave the meeting then get back inā€ and so on. Our apologies.

In this case, the Zoom issues are mitigated by the fact that we want to produce publicly available content. The questionable ethics of the Zoom company remains, and make no mistake: they have lost this customer, they just donā€™t know it yet.

1 Like

We know :pensive:

1 Like

@pbihr are you interested in being a part of this?

Thanks for your response. I understand where youā€™re coming from, I have just seen a few things flagged up in the last week and I am reacting to a wider tendency to overlook free / open source solutions which have less in the way of VC funding, PR, etc. etc. Still and all, apparently they are looking in to it (this just one of a number of posts on this theme).

I feel you. We have been trying to go stackless for over a year. It is surprisingly difficult and frustrating. This platform is FOSS, and so are our company chat (Matrix) and minimalistic project management tool (Dynalist). But we are still using big G for file storage, and proprietary accounting software, and, yes, Zoom. :frowning:

I looked just now at Zoomā€™s website to see if they have a response to the large amount of bad press resulting from revelations arising from that lawsuit. They say nothing about the problem. I think that is irresponsible of them to not make a privacy declaration at this time.

Glancing over, I can see you are on it. Far more so than many other institutions Iā€™ve seen trying to do something in this areaā€¦ Thanks.

Havenā€™t looked over EdgeRiders for years nowā€¦ Youā€™ve gone further than most so fair play. It is very hard and easy to wind up marginalising oneself just for making an effort beyond that people exploring the political / social side first are able to go. Still, this platform is better than most so Iā€™m thinking Iā€™ll come back here and thereā€¦

3 Likes

Please do!

Thank you for the initiative! I will join the call later, as I am a bit packed this afternoon. Somehow this pandemic has increased rather than slowed down my workload. kind regards, ccs

right??? How did this happen :roll_eyes:

2 Likes

Thanks, recognition means a lot. As I said, we are quite frustrated with how slowly it goes. I have been begging the EU to fund an open source Google Drive (at the time it was still called Google Docs) since 2008. And here we are now. :frowning: Hopefully we will pull through, togetherā€¦ and here we must acknowledge the great work of the Discourse people. We were always open source with our main platform, but it used to be a horribly clunky Drupal Commons affair with seven layers of duct tape keeping it together. Migration to modern, well designed FOSS was the best thing that ever happened to us!

3 Likes

Corinne, I am counting on you! But the call is next week, on Thursday.

1 Like

@ccs I took the liberty of adding your name to the list of ā€œparticipants who are doing work in this spaceā€ (as opposed to participants like me, who have no domain expertise but want to understand better how much we should be worried, and what to do). Let me know if thatā€™s OK, and what affiliation (if any) I should use.

1 Like

of course - Oxford Internet Institute :slight_smile:

Is it possible to join the call even with no domain expertise, just as interested individuals?

@alberto to save everyone time maybe re-use @ccs and @RobvanKranenburg bios from the festival?

Corinne Cath-Speth

Cultural anthropologist of technology governance, Oxford Internet Institute
Corinne Cath-Speth is a PhD student at the Oxford Internet Institute and Alan Turing Institute for AI. She is a cultural anthropologist studying Internet governance culture. Her PhD presents an ethnographic case study of human rights NGOs working in Internet governance organizations. She is interested in the Internet companies most people have never heard of but use every day and the human rights organizations

Rob Van Kranenburg

Director, Resonance Design

Rob van Kranenburg, is the Founder of Council_IoT and #iotday; co-founder of Bricolabs.

He has authored The Internet of Things: A Critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID (2007); co-author of Situated Technologies Pamphlets 8. He is Director of Resonance Design BV, partnering in the NGI CSA Strategy NGI Forward.

Do we need bios for everyone?

yes I think so, helps give context. Also, I can then make you nice flyers to promote it if you like.