Are You A Part Of The Tech Resistance?
Political minded individuals are taking to the internet to create change. Read more to find out how.
If you are aligned with a liberal worldview, the current political climate can be alarming, both online and off. The rise of nationalist and populist governments is evident across the globe, and it’s often the case that the internet is the facilitator, with phenomena like “fake news” and alt-right online communities having a significant impact.
Speak Out
However, it’s not all despair. As much as the internet can seem to foster illiberalism these days, it is also helping people who believe in liberal causes to fight back against what they see as an encroaching lack of tolerance in civic life. According to a recent Mother Jones article that chronicled the strong yet secretive presence of alt-right views presence in the Silicon Valley tech sector, we need this kind of vocal resistance more than ever.
Resistbot
One of the more ingenious ways of tech-fueled resistance that’s come to light recently is Resistbot. This turns users text messages to elected officials into faxes. After sending a text to the designated number, users are given a prompt asking for their name and zip code. This allows the bot to determine to which rep to send a given message.
The idea is that sending a text is incredibly easy for most tech uses, but a fax amplifies the impact the message receives when it arrives at the representative’s office. As Resistbot’s co-founder Jason Putorti told ReCode, faxes and emails “are considered just as effective or more so [than phone calls] because there’s no way to truly verify if a call is from a constituent. What staffers need are tallies, turning constituent input into a count of support for or against. Ideally there would be a much better system for this but our democracy isn’t perfect, it’s incredibly messy.”
Getting Involved
Resistbot is just one example of the rise of activist bots online and these are shaping the modern political agenda. As Wired put it, “Across social media, and especially enlightened platforms such as Twitter, that recognize bots as legitimate members of the community, robots are being used not to manufacture cars, but to try to manufacture political consent. We are living through the rise of automated activism.”
Sometimes these bots have a function that’s incredibly simplistic, but wonderfully interuptive. The DroptheIBot for example has the sole function of responding to a tweet which uses the phrase “illegal immigrant” with the retort: “People aren’t illegal. Try saying ‘undocumented immigrant’ or ‘unauthorized immigrant’ instead. There’s also the Nasty Woman bot, which automatically retweets any tweet that mentions the re-appropriated phrase.
Open Source Politics
Another, less automated solution that’s arisen in these times is thanks to the power of the humble Google doc. After Trump’s election a group of Capitol Hill insiders got together to create a guide for making congressional representatives listen to their constituents. Entitled “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda,” was initially launched as a Google doc shared informally online. It’s now a downloadable PDF guide in two languages. The charm was in the informality of the original draft—contributors could update the document as it was being formed across the country. This was achieved by using Google Doc’s shared editing function—as it was an example of low-fi way to quickly pool precious knowledge into one place using distributed editing tools.
Be Anonymous
Another major way that tech is encouraging activism is through the rise of encrypted tip-lines. Major publishing outlets have leveraged the power of encryption to provide anonymous tipsters and whistle blowers with a safe outlet to store their insider knowledge. This has led to big scoops and agenda-setting stories from major journalistic outlets, and it’s all thanks to the clever but accessible use of encryption.
Clearly, no single bot or Google doc will reverse the rise of illiberalism in America and abroad. But only a few months into the current administration, we’ve already seen a lot of innovation in this space. It will be exciting to see what comes next and what the illiberalists might do with it.