An important part of the effort is culture and esthetics. “ICE SUCKS DONKEY BALLS AND YOU SHOULD AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE INFESTED RAT FASCISTS THEY ARE” is a message worth amplifying, even if the tool to actually do the avoidance is flawed.
Yes, it’s theater. But theater is praxis too.
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It sounds like he’s just a dev who’s in over his head but either doesn’t want anyone to take his baby or doesn’t want people to see his sloppy and possibly insecure code. It’s probably a hack job behind the scenes and he’s not really as sure of its security, so he might be opting for security through obscurity.
But this isn’t really taking up space. Someone else can make a better app. If this guy isn’t the one to really make a useful crowd sourced anti ICE app, that’s not a problem. Let’s get that OS crowd together and work with local groups and make something better. In the meantime, this is a statement.
It sounds like he’s just a dev who’s in over his head but either doesn’t want anyone to take his baby or doesn’t want people to see his sloppy and possibly insecure code
I’d bet it’s a LOT more along the lines of the second guess, because it’s now cost his wife her job and has gotten him quite publicly tagged along with it. He’s got a large portion of himself invested in it, and of course it will sting and suck for a bunch of folks to come along and point out, both gently and horribly, knowing OSS folks, all the shortcomings and then make changes.
I agree that there should be an alternative, open-source project, though I know I’m not all that qualified to support outside of financially, (which I would).
I disagree that this isn’t taking up space. Notoriety is a huge asset, especially for tools like this that rely on crowd-sourced information. It would be far better, all other things being equal, to start with the user base and name of ICEBlock than to make a competitor and need to promote it enough to get people to use it over ICEBlock. I highly doubt that a competitor will get anywhere close to the same media attention that this got.
It doesn’t really seem like there’s any “secret sauce” there. What’s to stop someone who knows more about development from making a better version?
I’m down to do it, I just need to figure out a way not to get deported over it.
All activism is activism theater if it does not serve to direct counter-battery fire
Mobilization is the spark; organization is the fire. If you have the first and not the latter, you’re not moving the needle. Governments love mobilization because they can co-opt it. They can waste people’s energy via constant mobilization without established organizations.
Aren’t they going to dismantle any organization that works to undermine them ?
Maybe even shortcircuit it covertly to serve their own ends ?
I think the mobilization has to point toward something self-organization, an air-tight logic of action that operated randomnly enough that they don’t see it coming and therefore their bureaucracy can’t stop it or recuperate itYep, that’s why the super mainstream organizations putting marches together are always suspicious to me. They get their funding from somewhere and the overarching goal is never 100% clear. Often times it’s good people at the center that aren’t aware of the ulterior motive behind the ones bankrolling it.
Even smaller orgs can be easily manipulated. They often don’t do any real research on people before giving them access to internal information that they could easily send to whoever they are working for. It’s something I wish more activist and other organizations would invest their time into.
Has anyone else already read the whole thing and could save us a little time?
Isnt that they same App that got completely obliterated by a single Mastodon post by GrapheneOS?
Doesn’t seem like it? https://grapheneos.social/search?q=iceblock&type=statuses
It was BlueSky, not Mastodon and is linked in the article: https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3lt2prfb2vk2r
