Blog / Freedom

Leadership, community, and how I got Hacker News’s second-highest average karma

Leadership creates community. I'm writing today on leadership and creating community in a specific context for clarity, but it applies to anyone's participation in any community, online or off. I expect you can translate everything below to your world easily enough. If not, comment below and I'll clarify. An effective measure of your leadership skills is how much community you create. Another is how much your community appreciates you. Online communities that track upvotes quickly tell you how your behavior influences them, which can help you improve your communications skills. I don't want to imply participating in one little online community is a big deal, but why miss an opportunity to learn and improve one's communication and leadership skills with immediate feedback at no cost?…

0 Comments
October 17, 2013
Blog / Freedom

Edward Snowden — Whistleblower

[My previous post is my second-to-the-last on my series on daily and weekly beliefs that improve my life and may improve yours, in no particular order. See the introduction to the series and the value of flexibility in beliefs for background. The last one will be an introduction to the whole series, to come soon.] I haven't written about freedom and the Freedombox project in a while. If you've followed the leak about the information about how much the U.S. Government is spying on seemingly everyone it can, you can imagine I feel strongly about it. Readers here know the value I hold for accountability in leadership. Secrecy seems antithetical to accountability so the news seems to reveal something counter to what I consider effective…

4 Comments
June 10, 2013
Blog / Freedom

Your online tools spy on you. There is a way out.

I saw a snippet of a talk pointing out that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and others design software from the ground up to spy on you. Sometimes a blatant statement of a problem reminds you of it. People are learning about the problems with large corporations and governments having so much information on you, though they don't know what to do about it because they have no alternatives. Gmail benefits them more in the moment than the cost of possible problems in the future. Geeks recognized these problems decades ago and started creating tools to protect privacy. Tools are emerging to give people more alternatives. Just like Linux on servers kept Microsoft from monopolizing all servers -- can you imagine what would happen with one…

2 Comments
April 2, 2012
Blog / Tips

Leaving Facebook is easy and fun

I expect to log into Facebook once more -- to message my connections there that they won't be able to find me there, why, and where to find me instead -- then I'll leave for good. Why leave? I knew I wanted to leave after Facebook made its privacy policy too intrusive for my tastes. I felt they had too much control over my personal data. Facebook is creepy, getting creepier, and shows no sign of slowing down. Free cost does not mean I'm getting something for nothing. I came to see I was the product being sold to advertisers. What benefit I got -- networking online -- I realize I'm better off without, because I find myself more social without Facebook. I still appreciate…

5 Comments
March 26, 2012
Freedom

Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” reveals more than you’d think

I just read a post, "Google is FUBAR," (for non-geeks, fubar means "f'ed up beyond all recognition) suggesting the company is on a slippery slope leading not to its demise but to move its practices from what people like to what will lock them in and to risk more forays into anti-trust and privacy territories. Why is Google FUBAR, then? ... It must irreparably alter its fleet of successful web properties to become more Facebooky. It must alienate users with weird, ungooglesque features. It must force Chrome and Google+ down the throats of users who are simply looking for a brilliant search engine. The path towards Facebookness is fraught with strife. Facebook, as the incumbent with almost a billion active users, has a huge head…

1 Comment
January 25, 2012
Blog / Freedom / Leadership

An offer to the Freedombox community

My post on how Freedombox's pursuit of perfection is undermining its goals prompted some discussion. Hearing how people the Freedombox community wants to help end up supporting products we see as non-Free jolted my system. I believe constructive criticism helps, but my desire to contribute more led to the offer below. One person's response got me thinking about how I, as someone who doesn't write much software, can help. Diaspora is a decent example. They released something buggy, with minimal functionality, reasonably early on… yes, they were criticized for it’s quality at the time, but it got people using it (those who could get an invite / understand they go go elsewhere, anyway) and today they’re by far the largest free socnet alternative. Diaspora has…

8 Comments
November 13, 2011
Blog / Freedom

Freedombox’s pursuit of perfection undermines its goals

A journalist covering Iran I saw speak last night that got me thinking critically about the Freedombox in a way the Freedombox community would benefit from, in my opinion. Someone asked the journalist what people working for freedom in Iran did about governments having access to data on Facebook and similar tools. Being in the Freedombox community, I anticipated her saying something like it was a big problem and people had to avoid it. She didn't. She extolled the benefits of social networking and described how people worked around problems and celebrated Facebook, Twitter, etc. Since joining the Freedombox mailing list at its start, I've seen months of discussions on how to make it perfect. Pursuing theoretical ideals has some use, but I concluded the…

9 Comments
October 22, 2011
Art / Blog / Creativity / Freedom

Animated Freedombox logo!

In the midst of my series on Communication Skills Exercises, yesterday I worked with the brilliant, talented, and accomplished Nina Paley -- free culture advocate, creator of Sita Sings the Blues, cartoonist of the insightful, funny, and subversive Mimi and Eunice, and friendly neighbor. We animated the Freedombox logos John Emerson and I worked on. She also does things like post blog entries titled "I am awesome," suggesting an obvious affinity for someone as awesome as I. I enjoyed the links in the reference section of Nina's Wikipedia page. Search on her and you'll find more creativity, humor, and support for spreading and sharing culture and ideas. She knew about the Freedombox project and was open to contributing. We shared ideas of how to animate…

3 Comments
July 28, 2011
Blog / Freedom

Behind China’s Censorship

I had heard of the Great Wall of China. Now I'm behind it. They block Facebook, Youtube, plenty of Wikipedia pages (like pages on internet censorship in China), and links to software to get around the firewall. There seems to be a paid service to circumvent it. I can't say I understand the strategy behind blocking these sites. It seems counterproductive to my concept of what government is for -- something like enabling people to live the lives they want and protecting them from the opposite. For my  experience, I'm turning lemons into lemonade by using the experience as an opportunity to go without those time vampires for a while anyway. I don't get to post about my articles, so if you like something I…

2 Comments
July 1, 2011
Freedombox logo designs
Freedombox logo
Art / Creativity / Freedom / Models / Visualization

Freedombox logo designs

More Freedombox logo ideas, in collaboration with John Emerson. Click on them for larger versions. If you don't know about Freedombox, I recommend learning about (and supporting) it, unless you like third parties like corporations and governments having access to your personal life.

4 Comments
June 8, 2011
Freedombox logo ideas
Freedombox flowers
Art / Blog / Freedom / Nature

Freedombox logo ideas

A friend and I were playing around with logo ideas for the Freedombox project based on this email solicitation from the Freedombox Foundation for T-shirt designs: T-Shirt Designs --------------- One of the things we offered Kickstarter donors was a T-shirt. We are thus soliciting T-shirt designs. The theme of the shirt is Community Angels. It would be good to involve our current logo http://freedomboxfoundation.org/images/freedombox_large.png. Sorry, we don't have a bigger version of that. The chosen design will be printed on t-shirts that we will give to donors. Of course, if your design is chosen, we will cover you in thanks and make sure you get a shirt too. I will also buy you a beer next time we meet. Send designs in a free file…

0 Comments
April 17, 2011
Blog / Freedom

Creating more freedom

The New York Times wrote yesterday about Eben Moglen, whom I wrote about recently. "We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now," he said. "What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless as it could have been." ... If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy. "It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse," Mr.…

0 Comments
February 16, 2011
Freedom

Freedom today

The freedom for consenting adults to do what they like is as fundamental a freedom as I can think of and the protecting of it one of my most important interests. About once a week I say something like "I'm a big fan of consenting adults doing what they please." I'm not a fan of people preventing consenting adults from doing what they like or a person involving someone who doesn't consent. I find its purest (or at least most influential and inspiring to me) statement in Henry Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, the re-reading of which on the occasional Martin Luther King's birthday is one of my favorite pastimes, along with the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution. I find centralizing power enables some of the…

0 Comments
February 6, 2011

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