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Start Alliances, Not Wars

The privacy community consists of a patchwork of individuals, activists, organizations, and businesses that sometimes hold quite different views. These divergences can create conflict and friction at times.

While reporting falseness and abuse is important, when other differences lead to infighting, gossiping, competitive dunking, and organizations attacking others, we need to pause and ask how these internal wars are negatively impacting the community as a whole, both internally and from an outsider's perspective.

For our community to thrive and slowly build a movement, we need more alliances, not wars.

Here's how you can nurture alliances, instead of fueling conflicts:

Acknowledge that you cannot win this battle alone, neither as a person nor as a single organization

To fight for privacy rights in this hostile environment, we need to create a movement. Effective movements grow from collaboration, not from competition. You cannot do it alone.

Attacks on digital rights have increased exponentially in the past few years. Not one organization, and certainly not one person, can solve these complex issues on their own. Not even the most prominent ones.

Despite our differences and diverse points of view, we are all in this together. If we want to have a chance to succeed in making privacy a valued and respected human right, we must learn to support and uplift each other as a community. We must split up the tasks and learn to work together, even if it's only for sporadic actions.

When people and organizations sharing the same values come together, this builds a movement. And a movement is what is needed to push back against the countless attacks against privacy rights.

Reject competition, embrace collaboration

Sadly, it's quite common in the privacy community to see privacy-focused businesses and organizations publicly dunking on each other instead of collaborating.

Perhaps some businesses and organizations think they are competing for the same scarce privacy-minded customers or donors. But this is a narrow vision that doesn't represent the bigger picture.

The digital privacy rights movement is in its infancy.

There are in fact many more potential customers and potential donors, more than enough for every current organizations and privacy-oriented businesses on the planet. The part that is scarce is people who understand why protecting their right to privacy is important, and how to do it.

By promoting privacy rights together, we all participate in growing a movement where more and more people become aware of these issues, and will be interested in taking part in the solutions.

Competition, and especially when this competition leads to businesses and organizations badmouthing each other, ends up damaging the whole movement, therefore impacting negatively all of our goals.

Additionally, tearing down perceived competitors sharing your values isn't a good look for you. It's draining for people already in the community, and often repulsive to potential new people on the outside. This behavior often results in pushing away newcomers that were initially interested in joining our movement. This is bad for your competitors, sure, but it's also bad for you.

Newcomers get confused when they receive competing new information. Confusion leads to inertia, and inertia in the current Big Tech ecosystem means staying with Gmail instead of moving to Tuta or Proton mail, or any other privacy-focused email services. This is a bad outcome for all of us.

None of us win if people stop listening and stay with Big Tech, because we are too busy fighting each other. Instead of damaging the movement with infighting, combat inertia and build alliances with each other.

How to start alliances

Here are a few ideas to start building alliances within the privacy community:

  • Keep a list of organizations and other privacy activists sharing your values. Mastodon's list feature can be very helpful to build a social network feed for this. Using an RSS feed reader is another great way to do this.

  • Get familiar with what your allies are working on. Think about ways their mission might be compatible with yours.

  • Reach out to your allies and amplify their voices whenever you can. Boost them up! 📣

  • Participate in local events where you might be able to meet allies in-person, if this is something you can afford and do safely.

  • Organize a campaign and invite value-compatible organizations and people to join your action. Try asking for support that doesn't require too many resources on their part at first. As you build a trust relationship with your allies, you might want to increase your level of collaboration.

  • When a new privacy rights issue arises in the news, reach out to your allies and see how you could coordinate an action together, to make it more powerful. Joint statements signed by multiple organizations and specialists can be an effective way to sway public opinion, bring an issue to the attention of the media, and get governments to listen.

  • Ask your trusted allies about ways you could collaborate together. Think about how you could exchange or share resources to make both of your work stronger with partnerships.

How to stop wars

Here are a few ways that might help to reduce the impact of infighting within the privacy community:

  • Do not badmouth your competitors. This is a bad look for you, and has a negative impact on the whole community as well.

  • Do not engage when people or organizations are dunking on each other on social platforms. Disengage and do not feed the fire.

  • When trying to advertise your products or organizations, focus on what you have to offer that is beneficial and unique, instead of using comparison with your perceived competitors. Make sure to describe what you have to offer in simple terms, so that it's accessible to newcomers.

  • Be a part of the privacy rights movement. Participate in promoting privacy rights for everyone, even if that means some people might buy another company's services, or donate to another organization.

  • Position yourself as a mature leader in the movement who is above petty infighting. Instead, focus your energy on generously sharing resources for the cause, and promoting our shared values. Become a valued member of the privacy rights community.

Examples of digital rights alliances and coalitions

Host: Fight for The Future
Participants: ACLU, Defending Rights & Dissent, EFF, National Coalition Against Censorship, and more.

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Host: EDRi
Participants: ApTI, Bits of Freedom, Chaos Computer Club, Digital Courage, EFF, Epicenter Works, Internet Society, La Quadrature du Net, and more.

<section class="admonition success" markdown>
<p class="admonition-title">Coalition donation page example</p>

EDRi's Stop Scanning Me coalition provides a great example of collaboration with a donation page listing all the coalition members with their countries of origin, and linking to external donation pages. EDRi humbly listed their own donation link at the bottom. We need more strong coalitions like this.

</section><hr>

Host: EFF
Participants: Access, ACLU, Article 19, Center for Democracy and Technology, Human Rights Watch, OpenMedia, Transgender Law Center, and more.

<hr>

Host: OpenMedia
Participants: Amnesty International, BC CLA, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, EFF, FIPA, GreenPeace, Lead Now, and more.

More resources

[PWAs]： 漸進式網路應用程式 [WKD]： 網路金鑰目錄 (Web Key Directory)

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