Can the Fediverse Help Stop Bad Internet Bills?
wedistribute.org
Activism has historically worked best on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit in the past. With the shift in those networks, we have to wonder about the Fediverse. The July 20-28 Week of Action is a good time to experiment!

Here’s how EFF desribes the situation in You Can Help Stop These Bad Internet Bills

“Red alert! For the last six months, EFF, our supporters, and dozens of other groups have been sounding the alarm about several #BadInternetBills that have been put forward in Congress.We’ve made it clear that these bills are terrible ideas, but Congress is now considering packaging them together—possibly into must-pass legislation. I’m asking you to join us, ACLU, Fight for the Future, and other digital rights defenders in a week of action to protect the internet.”

Can the fediverse help? The fediverse has some potential advantages for activism on topics like privacy, digital rights, and LGBTQIA2S+ issues. So it’s worth experimenting, and the July 20-28 week of action on Bad Internet Bills is a great opportunity – to learn, and hopefully to have an impact as well.

Here’s four easy ways to help:

  1. Upvote and boost posts in [email protected] – and cross-post them to other communities and magazines where they’re on-topic
  2. On Mastodon, boost posts on the #BadInternetBills and #KOSA hashtags
  3. Get the word out on other social networks too
  4. If you live in the US, contact your legislators using Fight for the Future’s https://www.badinternetbills.com/
  • The Nexus of PrivacyOPEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    It is very much a fraught topic, so thanks for the very good discussion! Many intersex and asexual people don’t think of themselves as joining the queer community; neither do some trans people, and for that matter some gay, lesbian, and bi people actively dislike the term “queer”. It’s complex! Sometimes it makes sense to highlight specific identities – which is what I did in the post I did on [A (partial) queer, trans, and non-binary history of Mastodon and the fediverse](A (partial) queer, trans, and non-binary history of Mastodon and the fediverse) – but sometimes an umbrella term is more useful, and there really aren’t any great options. It’s a fair point that non-binary, pansexual, and others aren’t included in the acronym … like I said in the post, I with with LGBTQIA2S+ for this one because there’s a Mastodon instance called lgbtqia.space, and Indigenous people are often overlooked in the fediverse so I thought it was important to call out the two-spirit aspect. That said if I had known that 75% of the comments on this post would be about the acronym I might have taken a different path!

    • @Ryantific_theoryEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Yeah, bit of a shame that the acronym wound up being a lightning rod for engagement instead of, you know, the actual article lol. But despite it being around for at least a year (from when I was poking around), I think this was the first time many people saw that particular acronym. Especially after LGBTQ+ became the definitive inclusive option, albeit not as permanently as I’d imagined.

      At any rate, I feel like GSM is at least easy to use as an umbrella and lacks the charged history of queer being a reclaimed word. It might not spread awareness of smaller groups directly, but at least it keeps the focus on topic.

      • The Nexus of PrivacyOPEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Yeah, I’ve been telling people “good news: 25 comments on the article! bad news: almost all of them were about the acronym”. Oh well, we learn by doing. And as you say, a lot of people saw the acronym for the first time, and at least one person learned that two-spirt doesn’t refer to furries, so there was some useful education … it wasn’t my primary goal here but that’s never a bad thing.

        Different terminology makes sense in different contexts – and from different people. For a lot of what I write, I want the resonance of queer’s charged history; other times, it might not make as much sense.