Strategic Online Activism, Lecture Recorded and Posted

I recently presented a workshop on Strategic Cyber Activism: The TechnoSphere, Surveillance, and Resistance in Action for Strike U, and the team recorded the presentation, without recording any of the Q and A or participants. This talk is now available at https://youtu.be/qcrrOyaJJ9M Please share this information with anyone you think may benefit from it.

This workshop, which provides an introductory view of the scale, issues, and problems of the online world, also provides some practical tips. This is the first in a series on Strategic Online Activism that we are presenting for Strike U.

Sources used in this presentation:

• CIVICUS State of Civil Society 2020 Report - https://www.civicus.org/documents/reports-and-publications/SOCS/2020/SOCS2020_Executive_Summary_en.pdf

• An Online Environmental Scan of Right-wing Extremism in Canada. Interim Report. Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Jacob Davey, Mackenzie Hart, Cécile Guerin. Edited by Jonathan Birdwell. Published 19th June 2020 -  https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/canada-online/

• State of Hate Report: Far Right Terror Goes Global - https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/research/state-of-hate-reports/state-of-hate-2020/

• Hate Watch: Southern Poverty Law Center - https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch

• Here are the QAnon supporters running for Congress in 2020, Media Matters, Updated Sept 18, 2020 - https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/here-are-qanon-supporters-running-congress-2020 

• Trump praises QAnon, a conspiracy theory the FBI has deemed a domestic terror threat, Boston Globe AND BuzzfeedNews, August 19, 2020 - https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/19/nation/trump-praises-qanon-conspiracy-theory-fbi-has-deemed-domestic-terror-threat/  AND https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/trump-praises-qanon

• Hurting People At Scale:  Facebook’s Employees Reckon With The Social Network They’ve Built, Buzzfeed News, July 23, 2020 -  https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employee-leaks-show-they-feel-betrayed

• “I Have Blood on My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation, Buzzfeed News, Sept 14, 2020 - https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo

• We Must Fight Face Surveillance to Protect Black Lives: An urgent letter from the Algorithmic Justice League, Medium, June 3, 2020 - https://onezero.medium.com/we-must-fight-face-surveillance-to-protect-black-lives-5ffcd0b4c28a

• After Barr Ordered FBI to “Identify Criminal Organizers,” Activists Were Intimidated at Home and at Work: Four people in Cookeville, Tennessee were questioned about antifa after posting about Black Lives Matter rallies on social media. The Intercept, June 12, 2020 - https://theintercept.com/2020/06/12/fbi-jttf-protests-activists-cookeville-tennessee/

• Meet the rightwing power players lurking beneath Silicon Valley's liberal facade, The Guardian, February 10, 2017 - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/10/silicon-valley-right-wing-donald-trump-peter-thiel

• This Cunning, Months-in-the-Making Phishing Campaign Targeted Dozens of Journalists, Activists, Motherboard, February 14, 2017 - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ag94z/this-cunning-months-in-the-making-phishing-campaign-targeted-dozens-of-journalists-activists

• How to Hack an Election: Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time. Bloomberg Business Week, March 31, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/

• Automating Inequality: How High Tech Tools Profile Police & Punish the Poor, by Virginia Eubanks. St. Martin's Press, 2018 - https://virginia-eubanks.com/

• Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, 2018 - https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/about/

• Shoshana Zuboff, ‘Surveillance capitalism is an assault on human autonomy’ The Guardian, October 4, 2019 - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/04/shoshana-zuboff-surveillance-capitalism-assault-human-automomy-digital-privacy

• Shoshana Zuboff, Dark Facebook: Facebook’s Secret Experiment in Emotional Manipulation Provides a Fresh Glimpse of its Radical Politics and Absolutist Ambitions. 2014. https://zuboff4.rssing.com/chan-49720515/article3.html

• Shoshana Zuboff, Dark Google: We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money by knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it into the tiniest pieces. 2014. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-debate/shoshanna-zuboff-dark-google-12916679.html

• Shoshana Zuboff, Recent Articles - https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/recent-work/

• Researcher Marc-André Argentino, on Twitter - @_MAArgentino

• Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere: A geological perspective. 2016. Anthropocene Review - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2053019616677743

• Weight of the human world is heavy on scientists’ minds, Anthropocene Magazine, December 6, 2016 - https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2016/12/weight-of-the-human-world-is-heavy-on-scientists-minds/

• Earth's 'technosphere' now weighs 30 trillion tons, Science Daily, Nov 30, 2016 - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161130085021.htm  AND https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/the-technosphere-now-weighs-30-trillion-tons/

Resources:

• Live Internet Use Statistics - https://www.internetlivestats.com/

• Tactical Tech Collective - https://tacticaltech.org/#/

• Privacy International - https://www.privacyinternational.org/

• Algorithmic Justice League - https://www.ajlunited.org/

• Media Alliance - https://media-alliance.org/

• Change the Terms Coalition - https://www.changetheterms.org