They are too dependent on government sponsorship.
80% of their funding comes from the US government in some shape.
I would imagine that a project of that importance deserves to be able to be self-sufficient.
A US$2M budget/year is not that much, (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.
Better yet, having grass-root sponsorship is even more important.
Maybe they need marketing help more than anything else?
I work on a project depended upon and repeatedly promoted by Snowden (tweets) and less-than-public-figures-who-lives-depend-on-it (pastebins).
We gave up writing grant proposals. After repeatedly pouring hours into crafting proposals exactly as specified, the big one (no plural) OTF (.gov funding) has never responded. The smaller, more informal ones aren't interested as well (no clue why).
What little OTF money there is goes to the same projects, written by the same grant writers. We're told by insiders that we need connections, need to hire those writers, and we're told we need a sexier story.
We can't fund a modest income for the lead developer (approaching nearly a decade). He lives cheaply in a developing country off anonymous donations of unpredictable amount and timing.
Tor has resources we couldn't dream of, and if they're cutting staff, there's no hope for any open source security project.
> (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.
The thing is: When you're the kind of person that is able to amass m-/billions, you're unlikely to be very altruistic. Most of these people had to, excuse my language, fuck over people (workers, customers, investors, the larger public) along the way in various ways. You simply can't be a billionaire without some kind of severe exploitation and it is unlikely that, when you have no qualms doing so in one area, it is unlikely you care about people's livelihoods etc. in other areas (there are some exceptions ofc, Bill Gates comes to mind). Jeff Bezos is a perfect example: The richest person on earth has donated what amounts to a few cents for an ordinary person but with great public fanfare. Not even during the COVID-19 pandemic, he views it as necessary (cf. with Jack Dorsey, donating 1/3 of his wealth).
Oh no, I agree! He was definitely ruthless during his reign as the head of Microsoft. Generally, when one can show such disregard than one has an overall character allowing for that, so it's rare that people would behave differently when it comes to their wealth. But, of course, people can change - even if it is out of a feeling of guilt.
Craigslist isn’t a tech company. It’s a website. Not trying to disrespect them as I’m sure they do some impressive stuff behind the scenes to handle scale, I just don't feel they’re innovating in a way to be called “tech”.
Again, totally agree. But are you arguing that not changing/innovating, while refreshing, should be considered tech? I associate tech with innovation and trying something new. Zero to One.
It seems to me that Craigslist must have made some monumental misjudgment when they didn't expand internationally. I for one, for example, only know of them from hearsay as some kind of obscure US-only classified ads site.
They are international; it's just that outside of the US the quantity of posts is much lower as people use local alternatives.
Also a large portion of craigslist here was just the personals section - once that was shut down there is basically no good reason to use it anymore, as it simply doesn't have the network effect / critical mass of users to sustain itself. The remaining users all seem to be work-related scams of some kind (probably automated) and drug dealers (probably cops).
Companies with network effects benefit from having literally everyone on the platform, so you don’t need to go to a competitor to communicate with any particular person. That’s why Facebook has a Tor endpoint, so that people in repressive environments can still use it and add to the network effect. The downside is that Tor support does enable harassment on the platform.
Ironically, if they had more government sponsorship, they may be having fewer financial problems now. Government grant programs have multi-year contracts, and the agencies have yearly budgets. The government money is still flowing. It's the private money, from foundations and individuals, that has suddenly become unavailable due to declines in income and wealth.
I feel for the people at Tor who were let go. My company was in the same position and I was unfortunately on the list of people who had their position terminated. While I am upset that I am now unemployed I also can understand how a company can be put in a difficult position during this time. I will survive, and I hope they do too.
Unfortunately for me, I was a remote worker already (worked there for a month shy of 6 years). Hopefully, my position (React/Node FS Dev) is in high enough demand after all this to resume working remotely with a comfortable salary. I've already had offers for remote but they require me to relocate after the pandemic is over, which is really clogging up the job boards.
I understand it's a shitty thing to do, but at the end of the day your health/sanity is more important than some companies. If you have a good manager/coworkers you can even get them to bat for you to stay, as a remote worker.
Because, as you said, it's a shitty thing to do. I have the skills, experience, and finances to find a job where we can have a mutually beneficial relationship without trying to pull one over on them.
I'm sorry to hear about that but I'm sure you'll do great w/a react/node background I'm not even involved in front-end but I know quite a few places always hiring good react/node devs (albeit they might be in a freeze right now).
Luckily I am based in the US, but I am unable to travel (for personal reasons) which is also an interview dead-end for a lot of companies that want you to come spend a week for initiation and meet up a few times a year.
Neither. This is based on seeing a large number of companies, who are seamlessly capable of working and delivering products remotely (e.g. SaaS) moving to salary reductions, furloughs, and layoffs.
That's anecdotal data among companies and colleagues I interact with, but there's enough of it that it's compelling to me.
If you lived in North Korea, and in six months, you had a few friends die of COVID, while the government told you things were under control, you'd have no data or statistics, but you'd know there's something up.
That said, we do have data, but not broken out in that way. Best we have for data are unemployment claims.
And not all of the behavior is rational. Investing during downturns is much cheaper than during upturns. A year ago, top ML people cost north of a megabuck a year. Inflation reduces labor costs further. Companies who up investment now are likely to come out of the crisis stronger than ones who cut back, assuming money is available (either as loans or savings). But it seems to be a reality.
This got me to think about the ACLU and what they are doing.
I see some issues about accommodating justice and other issues affected by the pandemic and the intersection with liberties... it's more about looking at the compounding effect than protecting against fundamental change and fundamental threats to civil rights.
But I don’t see any take on any measures governments have taken to kerb civil rights in the time of the pandemic as well as talk about tracking and contact tracing. Also kerbs on the right to assembly and to go out and about, etc.
Yes this would abut against the fight against the disease, but that’s not their job. They usually don’t contextualize liberties. But here they seem silent and it’s a bit puzzling.
The ACLU has largely transitioned away from civil rights absolutism towards progressive advocacy. They haven't entirely tossed it out the door, and still sometimes defend the civil rights of non-progressive groups, but the modern ACLU definitely feels it's important to contextualize liberties.
Agreed, they have significantly changed over even just the last few years. It makes me a little sad, because we have plenty of progressive advocacy groups, and I appreciated the ACLU trying to be more focused.
In Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone, he talks about how several independent studies have elucidated that in modern times, civil engagement is at an all-time high when one considers the average number of civil group memberships per American (It's greater than one!), however the average number of Americans holding leadership positions within a civil group has plummeted. We also attend far fewer in-person events.
The reality is clear. Civil leadership has been consolidated into the ranks of middle management and ad executives. Modern civil activism is pay-by-mail, one-newsletter-at-a-time, simply install and forget.
If you find yourself frustrated with the leadership of the civil groups you maintain, consider splintering you and those in your groups who trust you into a new civil group which focuses on a local level: Local canvasing could be far more effective than distributing online propaganda.
See I don’t get it. If one of these people who get early release so much as go fishing somewhere they can end up back in jail. That seems perverse to me.
Well it's far more important to have the ACLU working on advocacy and rights for LGBTQ+ where there are demonstrable acts of violence and systemic oppression rather than waste time hand holding individuals who think they should be able purchase an Arsenal of firearms and spread Covid by not obeying and respecting their fellow citizens through their non compliance.
I'd say they are definitely where they need to be.. It's prudent and wise they not be involved with rabble rousers who through their non compliance, indifference, and questioning of authority silently slaughter members of minority communities that this disease adversely affects more than wealthy elites who miss their bed bath and beyond or their tee time.
So just quickly glancing at Wikipedia [0] it looks like most of the major line items for the LGBTQ+ agenda have been part of US Federal law for about 5+ years.
The LGBTQ+ community are basically ordinary people from all walks of life, including prominent names like Tim Cook and Pete Buttigieg. The community has I believe explicit public support from culture generating machines like Hollywood and political entities like the Democrat party. These aren't exactly wilting lilies in terms of power and influence.
It isn't obvious that supporting their liberties should take precedence over supporting anyone else's.
One of the unfortunate side-effects of having a few things on the "bucket list" ticked off is the conservative pushback gets targeted at the most vulnerable.
At present, that is frequently trans people. Often trans kids.
There are still a few residual gay rights issues, but over the past few years, LGBTQ+ rights has come to primarily refer to trans rights. One of the ACLU's major recent campaigns is that trans girls should be allowed to play on girls' sports teams, for example - that's seen as an important right nowadays, but it's not on the checklist because it was never relevant for gay people.
>One of the ACLU's major recent campaigns is that trans girls should be allowed to play on girls' sports teams, for example - that's seen as an important right nowadays
Of course, that's very much a nontrivial issue even among progressive circles. Your view is far from consensual.
Right, this is the kind of position I was referring to. The modern ACLU tends to direct their attention towards specific identity groups they feel are most deserving. I don't think they're quite as far along that path as you are - I can't imagine an ACLU representative implying you have a civic duty to unquestioningly accept the government's pandemic control measures - but maybe I'm wrong.
I wonder if they're just avoiding it as a tactical thing. Lawsuits aren't the quickest form of change, they might just not see any path to actually moving on those questions before they become moot. If they're planning for the long term, it might make more sense to see which forms of government overreach stick around too long.
I think that's the most likely scenario, but I'm not sure the implied tactics are actually accurate - many religious groups have been able to get swift injunctions.
That was a classically apt appearance because no doubt a hypothetical Nazi state would ban the ACLU.
I've been personally torn about this myself. I got chewed out once by a professor for advocating that people turn out to oppose David Horowitz. My opinion was that his speech was foul and needed obvious opposition, but I didn't want him shouted down. I thought that his schtick of going to universities promoting "academic freedom" which basically meant being able to tell liberal professors to shut up was dreck. However, he was shouted down and couldn't be heard. I felt bad about that, and agreed with the professor in the end. But, in a way, the dude was getting a taste of his own medicine: he certainly advocated for deplatforming people himself.
Woah, took me some time to digest this -- "contextualize liberties" must be the most Orwellian phrase in existence, only thing that might come close is another phrase you used, "civil rights absolutism."
It really is not. Right to physical assembly is something that should be restricted in the middle of a global pandemic, since that right cannot trump the right of life of hundreds of thousands of people. Same for the right to travel. Rights such as free speech or right to private property may be broken in more extreme cases such as war.
Pretending that nuanced reality doesn't exist is the definition of "rights absolutism".
No. Because tin-pot shitholes -- and the people trying to make them -- have, can, and will always find some new "threat" with which to justify taking away civil liberties. Things similar to what you have said here about "nuanced reality" with respect to civil liberties have always been for me a pretty good smell test for underlying authoritarian beliefs. In ANY context, it's possible to point to something as justification for taking away civil liberties in the name of safety and security. Yesterday it was internet death threats and human trafficking, today the pandemic, tomorrow who knows, but I promise there will be one.
I'm not familiar with the concept of "tin-pot shithole".
>have, can, and will always find some new "threat" with which to justify taking away civil liberties.
So slippery slope, is what you're arguing? "First they make a completely reasonable and temporary restriction of right of physical assembly, next we'll be off to the gulags." Isn't really an interesting argument, is it?
Let's put it this way: you have a right to life, but this right may be suspended in certain delimited circumstances: if you're posing an imminent threat to someone, or in certain places maybe if you're merely trespassing. You have a right to free speech, yet this is again restricted in many circumstances. You cannot: lie under oath, make a false accusation, make a libelous statement...
Pretending that a small sentence can encompass all the possible nuance of the multiple situations that arise in our messy reality is being an "absolutist".
In most countries all democratic parties are allowed, but parties that plan to abolish the democratic system are not. Is this a curb on civil liberties or just a reasonable stance?
The famous “yelling fire in a crowded theory” test for free speech is an example of contextualizing liberties. There is nothing truly Orwellian about it.
“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins” is another example.
Society is a context where we exercise our liberties.
"Yelling fire in a crowded theater" is a great example because it comes from a horrible Supreme Court ruling defending the arrest of someone handing out anti-war pamphlets.
I can't think of a better example of something that should be protected speech, or a better example of how "reasonable" limits will get abused.
Fortunately, that ruling has been mostly overturned by now.
This comment seems more like you taking an opportunity to flex on someone in a comment instead of refuting my underlying point. That’s great the ruling this saying was used in was overturned (I’m taking your word for it) but citing that fact completely misses the point...
The yelling fire one was (partially) overturned in court in 1969. Such speech can now only be limited if it would incite imminent lawless action (such as a riot), and so that example does not count.
Yeah, I don't want unlimited freedom of speech. Some types of speech are harmful with little benefit, from my perspective. I don't see the justification for making it permissible to yell "fire" in a movie theater.
As I have already told you the yelling fire thing is essentially a rhetorical device, that has been used to promote suppression of free speech to a much larger extent.
I don’t think I even care, but please be honest about it and tell people why and what you would ban.
I am sure that, like every one using the arguments you are using, you would suppress free speech much more than that!
Be open and direct, we still have free speech my friend!
It always comes down to censoring those you disagree with. Everyone loves free speech when it expresses views they agree with. If it's about silly edge cases, no-one really cares - the only reason to care is if it has political implications, regardless of if you are for or against suppression.
Absolute freedom of speech is equally as detrimental to society as totalitarian government censorship. Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies can convincingly be passed off as truth. The vast majority of the populace neither has the time, nor the inclination to properly vet, research, and confirm the information that is presented to them. Humans rarely acknowledge their own confirmation biases, which makes it trivial to manipulate the so called "marketplace of ideas". We're now beginning to see the myriad detrimental effects of an absolutist free speech society. Political troll bots manipulate opinions and sow discord. A huge slice of the United States relies on a reality warping "news" network that claims the right to fabricate falsehoods under the banner of free speech. Algorithms that feed users content send people down rabbit holes of extremist information fomenting groups of fervent believers in utter nonsense like "The Earth is flat", because the algorithms naively equate "engagement time" with value/truth.
Freedom of speech is a spectrum, and neither extreme of that spectrum is beneficial to a healthy society.
Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.
The facile answer is, "have an educated public who can make those decisions themselves". But it seems clear to me that the "educated public" approach has failed. The spread of memetic hazards has risen to the level where a significant segment of the public have been robbed of their ability to think critically, and the post-Enlightenment consensus that objective reality exists is under attack.
Beyond fighting a Fabian struggle in favor of critical thinking and quality information flows (which are lacking all across our society, even if that lack is particularly obvious with a certain political group) I'm by no means certain what a good, useful, and just response ought to be.
I am confident that the danger is real and needs to be acknowledged. We need to find paths forward if we're to have any hope of keeping our civilization. And that means talking (and doing something) about the "propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies". Sticking our heads in the sand and screaming "Free Speech!" while the tidal wave informational sewage rolls over us isn't going to be sufficient.
> "And that means talking (and doing something) about the 'propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies'"
The problem with your viewpoint is that, unless you plan to remove the ability of large swaths of the population who have been "robbed of their ability to think critically" to vote, ending democracy as we know it, whichever authority you construct to define what is "true" may not remain under the control of you and people who think as you do and then it will become Orwell's Ministry of Truth in all but name. Game over; civilization loses.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" as they say. Forgive us old-school liberals if we choose not to follow you down that road.
I reject the presumptions that the only possible response is a unitary authority and that we shouldn't do anything in response because any such response is automatically going to be bad. Come, on, this is Hacker News!
Why do we have to have a single central authority? We ought to at least be willing to speculate about AI-mediated Blockchains of Truth that reward factually accurate reporting. Or about ways to smoothly tell users how accurate the source they're reading has been in the past, or how to implement smart filtering of information streams to protect our own minds so that we can avoid wasting time on cognitive hazards.
The point is that we have options beyond just sitting back and giving up. The problem is real, as are the risks to responding poorly. But that doesn't justify not responding at all.
Yes, this is Hacker News and that means we understand systems thinking.
Either the people collectively get a say in what is "factually accurate", an ill-defined concept in the first place, or they don't (authoritarianism); the mechanics do not matter. And if we accept your premise that large swaths of the population have been "robbed of their ability to think critically", then whatever the system decides is "factually accurate" will be corrupted if the people have a say in it. Or, in other words, "garbage in, garbage out".
If there are other options, please articulate them.
The options you described just leave us with a less direct version of what we have now. Someone owns and runs media companies because it is a source of influence and income. Someone will run the AI-mediated Blockchains of Truth, etc for the same reasons. All you will accomplish is shifting the power around momentarily, perhaps even to worse actors than we have now. But even if your ideas are very vague they are at least approaching concrete which is good because we can compare with existing solutions. But looking at those ideas, I don't see anything promising there.
Which is fine. It's a tough problem, and I have no expectation that a random poster (myself included) is going to suddenly come up with a perfect solution. As we search for solutions, there are at least two fallacious lines of reasoning that need to be rejected:
Something must be done. This is something. This must be done!
And,
This won't work. Therefore, nothing will work. We should do nothing!
I understand and agree with those who reject the first. But turning from the first only to embrace the second is also a mistake.
Did someone here embrace "This won't work. Therefore, nothing will work. We should do nothing!"? I don't see that in this thread, but feel free to point it out if I missed it.
I simply started with a seemingly easy question: who decides what is and is not fake news? Trying to answer that question yourself hopefully helps illustrate just how challenging it is to find a solution that isn't worse than the problem. But hopefully with enough pondering on that question, one does start to lean in the direction that any solution must include individuals ultimately deciding for themselves what is and isn't fake news.
Does that imply nothing will work? For sure it does not. But it might imply we are already there: the best cure for fake news might be working harder to make real news more persuasive. It could be a boring matter of will and effort - a lot of grunt work. By talking to the journalists engaged in that work, you would uncover the actual challenges and perhaps ideas around the technologies that could better empower that change. Or not. The internet itself was supposed to help us become better informed. Clicks + adverts + automatic measurement, rinse, and repeat; proved that ideal wrong. At least for now.
I am not confident the danger is an existential threat. I think it's an interesting problem that markets are doing a poor job of solving. But since I don't want any government in charge of deciding what is fake news and you haven't sugeested a concrete solution so we can compare the cure to the illness, then what we have now will have to be sufficient.
The expression is derived from 'Fabian strategy'[1], but the 'strategy' part didn't seem quite appropriate, since this isn't a military campaign. I've heard it before, but a quick round of googling shows that the 'Fabian struggle' construction is considerably rarer than I expected.
Education != ability to think critically. It is a problem of biology - we are hardwired to believe things in a certain way based on all kinds of cognitive biases, etc. I don't see a way around regulation, and I don't see a path towards effective regulation given the current system benefits those who would design the regulations.
We have a system to filter "real" information from "fake" information where distributing fake information is a lucrative business. It is called peer review, and it can be applied to news as well as science, and doesn't require some nefarious government czar.
Peer review of news by citizens is already done in an informal way based on what they click on and share. Even when you point someone to Snopes showing a news article is false, people will respond saying Snopes is run by lefties and cannot be trusted. All you are suggesting is mob rule - the majority decides what is fake news.
That would be a horrible system for news. It would put a huge amount of power in the hands of whoever is determined to be an expert.
And I don't see how it fulfills your previous claim:
> and doesn't require some nefarious government czar.
Because someone has to decide who the experts are. Peer review in science is performed by those who have a degree from a government accredited institution.
> It's usually used by people who would like to limit freedom of speech much more than that.
Source with stats? Here's my anecdotal counter evidence: I only ever hear it used by people who don't want to limit speech except when it will cause immediate physical harm.
It seems you’re right and it’s a shame that in this time when a few governments are taking advantage of the situation they don’t have their ears perked and tuned to ensure governments (local, state, fed) aren’t going overboard, impinging rights, or looking to erode them. I mean this affects the whole US constituency.
I think the protestors are being stupid, but if they get arrested I would like to see the ACLU help defend them. Even though I think established law would put them in the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" camp, unless the courts are willing to reverse that precedent.
I am personally sympathetic. My beef with my local variant is that they protested by driving around my neighborhood honking in morning and afternoon. It gets attention, but does not exactly garner support. It those terms it reminds me of BLM blocking a highway. Whatever happened to protesting where actual decision makers are?
The case that was reversed was not about shouting fire in a crowded theater, the fire quote was just a rhetorical device. If a judge uses 2+2=4 as a rhetorical device in a decision, then the decision is later overturned, that doesn't mean 2+2!=4. So the fire quote could still remain true.
I think a charitable reading of kragen's short comment is that Schenck was reversed by the 50s, which is absolutely true. The idea of "sedition" is a restriction on constitutional first amendment speech.
Yes, the "fire" quote is just a rhetorical device from Schenck. No, the "fire" quote is likely not true today.
The supreme court has very narrowly defined exceptions to the first amendment since the time of Schenck (just "fighting words," which is vague and narrow enough it may not really exist either). You can yell fire in a crowded theater; it's not fighting words. It just makes you a dick.
P.S., the historical context for the "fire" rhetorical device was that there had been a series of horrific theater fire mass-deaths in the early 20th century due to doors that were either locked, or opened inwards — before the era of fire safety regulation. Some deaths were due to crushing at the doors, rather than actual fire or smoke inhalation. Modern theater doors open outward and don't lock from the inside, so we don't have this particular flavor of horrific incidents in our social consciousness.
Yeah, but I don't think projektfu was talking about sedition, so bringing up sedition didn't seem relevant to me. projektfu was just using the quote as a reference to an example type of forbidden speech.
The podcast you linked to in your other comment seems to think the quote is true today (although not useful in most discussion due to being too obviously true):
> It’s a rhetorical device to say the First Amendment is not absolute, which is true, but that’s not in dispute. [...]
> It’s as if we were looking at an animal on the side of the road trying to decide what it is and I said not all animals are cats. Your reaction would be yes, thank you, I am aware, but the question is, what is that animal? We have the tools we need to decide what that animal is on the side of the road. With free speech those tools are a 100 years of Supreme Court cases.
There are people still being crushed to death at events today, maybe not theaters:
As has been made clear by subsequent comments, projektfu was just repeating words they had heard previously, without having any idea what they referred to, as Eliza or a scarlet macaw might do. It's not useful to project an intent onto their words to refer to anything in particular. Presumably projektfu is, unlike Eliza, a human with mental processes who is capable of forming intents, including intents to emit utterances that refer to objective or consensus reality; but such an enterprise requires efforts that were not made in this case, such as reading the six lines of text at the top of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_in_a_crowded_theater and basing their comments on them†.
Moreover, I think this is true of most rhetorical devices in general, and that is part of what the podcast is criticizing. They are not attempts to collaboratively consider the evidence in order to arrive at shared conclusions informed by the knowledge of all parties; they are attempts to influence whatever conclusions may arise, by hook or by crook, to benefit the interests of the utterer, and whether either the utterances or the conclusions happen to be objectively true or false is none of the utterer's concern.
I consider this contemptible, and I try to engage in it as little as I can manage.
† Incidentally, this page explains that Schenck was not specifically overturned until Brandenburg in 1969 (although the Brandenburg decision doesn't mention Schenck), but the Supreme Court's progressively broader reading of the First Amendment was already protecting antiwar and anticapitalist activism by the 1950s, for example in Gibson (1946), Estep (1946), Dickinson (1953), and Yates (1957).
Actually I was talking about the sedition case, but more of a “clear and present danger” type of reading. I don’t think it’s seditious to protest emergency measures, but at the same time there’s a grey area where the right to protest buts against public safety. These are short term restrictions. I assume in the government wants to get their jurisdiction back to normal. At least, there’s no evidence to me that they are happy about the current situation.
I understood Holmes to be saying that protesting the war in that epoch could lead to actual violence in the US. The domestic terrorism of the anarchists earlier in the decade could make you feel that way.
I was wrong, and I apologize for jumping to such an uncharitable conclusion and for baselessly accusing you of psittacity. I was being a jackass, and I'm sorry.
> projektfu was just repeating words they had heard previously, without having any idea what they referred to, as Eliza or a scarlet macaw might do.
I use many figures of speech every day which I don't know the etymologies of. I don't think it's necessary to study the origin of every figure of speech before using it.
You mentioned Milo downthread, but I'll give another counterexample: the ACLU sued the city of Charlottesville when they said they'd only permit Unite the Right to happen at the larger McIntire Park on safety grounds. As a result of the lawsuit, the rally happened at the much smaller and busier Lee Park.
(Personally, that's why I no longer support the ACLU - this wasn't analogous to the Illinois Nazis case, and as everyone expected, violence happened and someone died. I felt like the ACLU had let their focus on civil rights absolutism drive them to defending someone whose civil rights weren't actually under threat instead of spending their resources on actual ongoing threats to civil rights.)
ACLU changed their policy of supporting everyone against any freedom of speech and freedom of assembly repression by the government AFTER Charlottesville. That only supports the OP's point. That was the point they gave into to pressure from outside groups and gave up their values.
Compromising once is enough to compromise it always and their recent posturing on social media has done nothing to dissuade that this is the case. They've only doubled down and joined the outrage mob driven political system.
I personally don't want to live in a world where every political ideology needs their own legal defence non-profits which only do things for political ends... not for a higher purpose. Largely because they lose tons of credibility in the face of dismissal when they compromise their values for politics.
Credibility is very important in this sort of thing. Plenty of other major human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and the ACLU long defended far-right groups and the world didn't burn down in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc.
They did it because they same thing that shuts those 'bad guys' down will be used to bring down the 'good guys'.
I highly recommend the founder of Human Rights Watch's book on this topic when they defended Neo-nazis in the 1970s:
Defending My Enemy: American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, and the Risks of Freedom:
Again - I disagree with the view that they "gave up" their values, and I don't want to live in a world where every political ideology needs its own non-profit, either. I think the ACLU can and should be an organization that defends the right to freedom of speech of everyone regardless of political affiliation.
I'm arguing that their lawsuit in Charlottesville didn't actually serve the goals of protecting civil rights or defending principles which are important to protect other people's civil rights. I'm arguing that the Charlottesville case was different from the Illinois Nazis case - Unite the Right wasn't primarily about speech, it was about violence, and the speech acts that Kessler et al. wanted to do would have worked just fine in the other park, which would have been logistically easier from a public safety perspective. I'm arguing that if Charlottesville's original decision had stood and established precedent that somehow later applied to a "good guy" protest, that would be okay, because of the specific facts of the Charlottesville case.
I'm arguing that the ACLU was right to take on the Illinois Nazis case, and would be right to take it on again today. You don't need to convince me of that. (If the ACLU has somehow managed to get itself into a position where it's not willing to do that anymore and it hasn't convinced people like me that it's learned its lesson from Unite the Right, then they're truly incompetent.)
It is of course a little difficult to separate the idea of protecting civil rights from political ideology: the idea that civil rights are worth protecting is a political ideology itself! But I think the broader point, which I agree with, is that you should be willing to protect the civil rights of people who do not think that civil rights are worth protecting.
> Unite the Right wasn't primarily about speech, it was about violence
This is easy to say with retrospect. How many other major protests in history would you have compromised had you known there would be violence?
Any embedded provocateur could easily kill any protest.
Any extremist portion of any political group, no matter how small, could kill the mainstream purpose of the wider legitimate group.
I'd much rather we strongly defend their right to protest in public spaces, regardless of ideology, and instead we react to any planned or actual violence (which is already illegal). Including targeting individuals who have that as part of their agenda. Not attacking the larger groups at the point of their freedom of assembly. Which is all ACLU ever protected them from when they defend their right to protest in one city park instead of one far away from downtown.
I'd love to see where Unite the Right people fought for the right to commit violence in court and where ACLU had any part of that...
I think it was clear in advance of Unite the Right that many of the groups actively invited by the organizer were interested in violence. This wasn't embedded provocateurs or out-of-control extremists. Furthermore, Charlottesville didn't deny Unite the Right a permit - they just offered them a permit at a different location than what they wanted.
Obviously the organizer didn't go to court and say, "I would like the right to commit violence, can you please give me that right because free speech." But he did go to court and say "Me and my militia buddies who are hoping for a civil war and are bringing their guns would like to hold a rally at this crowded location where police can't keep things under control, and the city said that we can hold a rally at this less-crowded location instead, can we have our original location please?" and the ACLU defended that.
I think we're too far off-topic to argue about whether my view of Unite the Right is true or not - but I think I've set out a coherent position about principles (and, in particular, if my view is wrong on the facts, then I am in favor of the ACLU's support on principle.) I think you'll find that I am, in fact, opposed to most riots and do not believe there is an unalienable civil right to riot. I do believe in the right of people to protest even if there's a violent faction you can't do anything about. (And, in particular, I don't believe that information in retrospect about the violence of a given protest is relevant. I would still hold the same position if nobody had died or even been injured at Charlottesville, because of the information we knew beforehand. That is, my position rests on it the ACLU having been wrong at the time they filed the suit, not after the fact, which is a good part of why I don't think they've learned anything from it.)
> This wasn't embedded provocateurs or out-of-control extremists.
I never said it was. And that completely misses the point on why it's important. (surprise: you don't have to defend Charlottesville to defend the ACLU)
You're basically providing anyone an easy tool to kill any protest before it gets off the ground.
Any protest where antifa plays a role would be DOA (and having attending my fair share that's at least ~50% of the major ones)... do you think all the human rights, union, indigenous, etc groups control which protests Antifa shows up at? Should they have to self-regulate their protests so no one shows up wearing all-black is allowed to participate?
Anyway you're free to stop supporting ACLU if you prefer a political-driven legal group. I'm sure they exist. ACLU lost 30,000 members after Spokane but was still a force to be reckoned with for decades. I'm just saddened to see this short-term thinking also infecting lawyer groups and famous rights-defending academic institutions. I'm not surprised to see it in the media, Reddit, and elsewhere where higher values aren't embedded in their purpose.
The courts should always be the last line of defence and at a minimum should be immune from politics. Without politically neutral legal defence groups the world will be far worse off than the benefits of stopping a few nazis from protesting.
I've said multiple times now that I think the ACLU did the right thing in the Skokie case. I don't know why you keep thinking I want a "political-driven legal group" (nor why you imply the defense of civil rights isn't "political").
Like I said, nothing the ACLU has done or said since then has shown this is narrowly limited to Charollettesville. I highly doubt they would do Spokane today.
I followed their work for years and supported them for a long time. I'm saddened to see them shift in this direction.
> do you think all the human rights, union, indigenous, etc groups control which protests Antifa shows up at? Should they have to self-regulate their protests so no one shows up wearing all-black is allowed to participate?
Of course they should self-regulate - or at least make it very clear when the presence of violently-inclined groups isn't welcome to the organizers. Because the alternative is that the government will regulate those protests instead, which would be a lot worse.
>This is easy to say with retrospect. How many other major protests in history would you have compromised had you known there would be violence?
>Any embedded provocateur could easily kill any protest.
But this wasn't a provocateur, promptly disavowed by the protestor leaders. It was concerted, intentional, premeditated violence. This was known, or at least expected, beforehand.
Though I remain conflicted with their choices, I sympathize. Generosity, credulity, principle will always be exploited. I have no idea how anyone can safeguard against bad faith.
One kind of bad faith is that of the Illinois Nazis. Obviously, had they succeeded in their political goals, the ACLU would be purged and fundamental civil rights would be abridged for all but the chosen race. Still, they had a valid free speech concern, and the ACLU believed in a society where anyone could conduct a march, even if the Nazis didn't and were being hypocritical. So even though the ACLU was helping a group who was more than ready to backstab them, the ACLU was still able to accomplish its own goals. The general-case interest of the ACLU in protecting everyone's right to protest lined up with the specific-case interest of the Nazis in protecting their own right to protest.
The other kind of bad faith is that of Unite the Right, which was not being denied the right to rally - only the right to rally in a physically easier-to-control space, and which had not raised concerns because of the content of their messaging but because of the pro-violence groups that were participating. As a result of the bad faith, the ACLU was duped into believing there was a threat to civil rights, which there was not, and they were coopted into assisting the organizers with a goal that they didn't actually agree with.
I agree that it's hard to tell, but in the case of Unite the Right, opposing activists had been warning (with evidence) that the plan of the rally was to create conditions for violence and that their goals weren't merely speaking and peaceably assemblling. In the Skokie case, there were no such concerns. I even think it's reasonable for the ACLU to have gotten it wrong - provided they did a retrospective on how they got it wrong (that was not merely "we shouldn't defend neo-Nazis anymore"), which to the best of my knowledge they didn't do.
Belatedly, sorry: I really appreciate your thoughtful reply.
I had to refresh my memory of ACLU's involvement. FWIW, reading their own position, I think they made a good call.
But more importantly, they fail to explain their process for deciding which cases to take.
The handful of affiliates I checked don't publish their bylaws, meeting announcements, minutes, and so forth.
Having served as Secretary for my local political party, I saw firsthand the importance of transparency and accountability. While the charges of bias and so forth never go away, our org, uniquely in our region, always addressed those concerns head-on. We also proactively recommended to our members amendments to our bylaws, to address holes or changing circumstances.
> But I don’t see any take on any measures governments have taken to kerb civil rights in the time of the pandemic
Part of it is that I expect that the ACLU doesn't really want to take on cases that are simply going to be moot once the state of emergency ends. I expect that their ears will perk up a little more about things that don't go back to "normal" once everything is done with.
And part of it is probably not wanting court cases to actually go through the courts unless they are sure they can win. If you send a case through to the Supreme Court right now, you may lose and set a really bad precedent.
The ACLU is likely better off fighting by lobbying and getting laws passed rather than using the courts right now.
I'm not saying everything ends up being like the Patriot Act, but sometimes they do and once they get enacted they like hanging on way past their due date --sometimes they don't even sunset at all.
I follow on Twitter and have seen a lot about prisoner/immigrant advocacy (probably because of my Twitter bubble/liking habbits). But re-looking seems like a good mix of voting rights and medical access mixed in https://twitter.com/ACLU/
"The ACLU" isn't one homogeneous entity. I've spoken with my locals about privacy and voting rights. Naive me thought I'd have ready allies.
Nope.
Lefties are all over the place. Agreement on one issue is no predictor for any other issues. First persuade others to acknowledge a problem. Then get commitments of effort, support. Then forge a consensus around an action plan. Be very wary of kindly seeming people who are actively working against you.getting everyone to agree to the same set of reforms is even more work.
Worse of all, getting momentum is very hard. Because your coalition will dissolve the moment any change is enacted (if not earlier). Because no one will agree on the next steps.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Policy and coalition building is a lot of work. Maybe avoid my mistake of burning out too soon. Pace yourself for a marathon.
For a project that is about freedom of information they sure kept this vague. Why not share more details of why you had to fire people, what funding sources dried up, etc?
To protect the privacy of the users you want the organization to be as transparent as possible about everything not involving user data. If the organization is hiding something, that something could be user-hostile.
I’m confused by this... why are layoffs happening so suddenly? Did they recently lose some large corporate sponsors? How many donations have been cut off over the last few months? Do they not have money in the bank?
From my perspective it looks like they have had ongoing financial problems, and are using this as a convenient scapegoat to cut expenses.
It doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Imagine if your company was going through a financially difficult time, and firing becomes the only path forward. This can greatly impact the team's moral and trust in management. Using the crisis as a scapegoat makes it easier to accept the event.
On the other hand if you're lying about the real reason that can cause distrust among employees and hurt morale. (Not to mention I consider it unethical.)
I’m not saying that it is necessarily a bad thing, just that blaming a few months of decreased donations for laying off 37% of your employees doesn’t pass my sniff test.
If your donations were only covering ongoing expenses with nothing left for a reserve fund, then losing a third of your funding and laying off a third of your workforce doesn't seem unreasonable.
I’m sorry to hear this, also surprised. Is the funding for Tor going to be so immediately affected they had to cut staff without a public appeal or anything?
It can totally happen. Funding commitments are gone fast when a crisis hits. People start cutting costs and start trying to find ways to reduce expenses. Giving away money it's definitely a bad idea during an economic crisis, so non-profits are hit hard.
Why isn't there a public open-source fund to finance open projects (ie one to which the donors have no clue or control where the funds will eventually go; they're disbursed on the basis of how widely something is used)?
I assume you are aware Apache does not pay for any kind of software development.
They only spend money on some minor infrastructure to have JIRA and the mailing lists and build servers running; plus administrative / legal personnel.
All the new "Apache" software is written by volunteers, the mirror system is provided free by 3rd parties, code hosting is almost all on GitHub.
So, what would they need the extra money for? Another JIRA instance?
By comparison the FreeBSD foundation does hand out grants to fix parts of their OS which they deem relevant and in need. Would be nice to see something similar in other foundations.
An open source foundations with billions does not exist, except Mozilla Foundation but they don't really spread out the money to other projects compared to what they spend on their own products.
So, the answer is that nothing exist.
Out of the given options a few also don't qualify (like I mentioned, Apache for sure, opensource.org most likely) because they don't spend money on software development at all.
Probably because the players who can amass a billion $ fund would rather put their money somewhere else. You're basically asking why is capitalism capitalism?
GPS, GSM, fiber optics, Internet, touchscreens, semiconductors, satellites, most of chemistry and aviation - all were researched and developed using taxpayer money.
And it took billions.
Now all public R&D is being destroyed and yet FLOSS fits exactly in the category.
We desperately need large, global, R&D funding not some people throwing some bucks at patreon.
Public means non-profit and wholly transparent, explicitly dedicated to the creation and expansion of a software commons. It infuriates me that people who work on important projects like numpy or Tor which are very widely used have trouble paying the bills and keeping a roof over their head.
I don't make it because I don't work in the software industry and don't have access to large social or financial capital networks. That sounds a bit like asking why someone who proposes a public policy idea doesn't just run for President.
The problem is that this what you get when you make a commons without reciprocity or equality.
Reciprocity means the producer/upkeeper and consumer each put something into the commons that balances out mutual needs. if only a few people can create or maintain, the many users must contribute in a lesser fashion to enable them.
Equality means that everyone create or maintain, so the burden isn't shared on a small group. If we are all farmers, we can each handle a share of a common field.
But this kind of commons is asymmetrical, and that's why you'll never see people pay the bills anywhere near close to the need. This kind of common can really only be noblesse oblige, where people with abundant resources give charity. It isn't, so people struggle.
The idea of "everyone" owning something, ie a commons, is a contradiction. If everyone owns it, then no one owns it.
Assume the thing has exactly one owner. Then "reciprocity" and "equality" are addressed by the owner charging a fee to use the thing. Currency exchanged by consumers compensates the owner-operator's work.
> It infuriates me that people who work on important projects like numpy or Tor which are very widely used have trouble paying the bills and keeping a roof over their head.
Donate money to projects you care about. Persuade your friends to donate.
> I don't make it because I don't work in the software industry and don't have access to large social or financial capital networks.
What’s the plan for getting the doers onboard? Pay them? Persuade them to work for free? Persuade the government to tax someone else to fund them?
Or are we just shouting about things we don’t like? Because let me tell you about low quality leather goods...
Everyone knows that there's a huge gap between wanting something to exist, and wanting something to exist, while having the expertise, time, resources, and will, to bring it into existence.
Since you know this as well as I do, I want to ask: what is your motive in asking this question?
I was hoping this would be an analysis of changes in usage patterns.
System identification may be easier (and privacy thus worse) now that the network topology is more static, as people move around less due to the virus.
You do not have 35 employees without some sort of stable budget. Seems very unlikely the budget changed so much in the past few months that you have to reduce your headcount by 40%!
Then they even mention that they expect Tor to be even more relevant in the coming period. Well, now would be a good time to keep the people, work on the product and show how relevant it is.
Very little specific detail considering they are a non-profit. Why not post the numbers?
One should expect transparency from little startups showing us their monthly revenue and such. We have to wait for the yearly audited reports to get a small glimpse into the world of non-profits.
I've read a few of these reports to know they are generally useless or well hidden.
It's early April. I'll just quietly wait another 8 months to see how their financials changed.
Or I could hunt down previous reports, see their revenue, infer their operating costs (assuming they didn't hire any new people), then guesstimate how their projected revenue is altered to much as to require a 40% headcount change.
Or maybe, just maybe, a non-profit could have posted this info.
I would imagine that a project of that importance deserves to be able to be self-sufficient. A US$2M budget/year is not that much, (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.
Better yet, having grass-root sponsorship is even more important. Maybe they need marketing help more than anything else?