Speaker 1: Yeah, Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a
Speaker 1: podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
Speaker 1: This season is all about tech and how it can
Speaker 1: bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you the people using technology for so much more than
Speaker 1: revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
Speaker 1: Take me to the scene and and paint a picture
Speaker 1: for me of Bahrain, the place where you grew up.
Speaker 1: I think Bahrain is honestly one of the most beautiful countries.
Speaker 1: We're surrounded by watcher as an island obviously, but there's
Speaker 1: palm trees. Um. I could do without the traffic because
Speaker 1: we're also a very small country, you know. But what
Speaker 1: I love about it so much is that everything is
Speaker 1: community and family oriented, and it's oftentimes regardless of what
Speaker 1: you think and who you are and how you feel.
Speaker 1: When it's family time, it's family time. That's where you
Speaker 1: get together and you eat that type of togetherness. It's
Speaker 1: where everybody kinds of just melts together and it's chaos,
Speaker 1: but it's beautiful chaos. You don't have as many fights
Speaker 1: when you have these get togethers as because nobody can
Speaker 1: actually hear the other person. Everybody's just talking over people,
Speaker 1: and it's like you're you're you're talking to somebody, but
Speaker 1: you also have a mouthful of dates. It's a great
Speaker 1: place to be, but it's also a terrifying place to be.
Speaker 1: You want to be yourself, but you also can't. But
Speaker 1: you also don't want to fault the communities and the
Speaker 1: people there. For the most partits it's not our faults.
Speaker 1: Of course, we are accountable, but it's not like we
Speaker 1: can just rise up and say, hey, yeah, I would
Speaker 1: disagree with this and we're going to do something about it,
Speaker 1: because the consequences are dire. But you also love everything
Speaker 1: that it stands for when it comes to community and
Speaker 1: passion and people really care about each other. I mean,
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago we lost our house to
Speaker 1: a fire. There's not a single person in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: that didn't come to help us. This is Estra al Chaffe.
Speaker 1: She's the founder of Masall, a network of digital platforms
Speaker 1: that amplifies underrepresented voices. Today we're going to be focusing
Speaker 1: on one of those platforms called Awa, a gamified social
Speaker 1: media app designed for the l g B t q
Speaker 1: I plus community. In the Middle East and North Africa.
Speaker 1: What does that mean exactly? Well, imagine you were on
Speaker 1: a social media app where you were anonymous but also safe.
Speaker 1: Are you thinking baratun day? That's impossible. As long as
Speaker 1: there's an Internet, there will be trolls and threats and surveillance.
Speaker 1: Oh my, and I hear you trust me. I've got
Speaker 1: haters too, But it's true. Eestra's built a platform where
Speaker 1: kindness earns you points, and points give you access and
Speaker 1: trolling that costs you points. But first, let's learn a
Speaker 1: little bit about the person behind the platform. We forget
Speaker 1: that sometimes, right there's always a person. Hello, Etra, how
Speaker 1: are you doing. I'm doing very well. Thanks, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well as well you should be if you're
Speaker 1: talking to me, all right, and we're off to a
Speaker 1: fiery start. I love it. Normally, when I'm doing these conversations,
Speaker 1: I have the video of the person i'm speaking with
Speaker 1: up and we can see each other. Your video is off, though,
Speaker 1: why is that my video is a is off? And
Speaker 1: that's for my safety. I've always been physically anonymous with
Speaker 1: the type of work that I do, which is of
Speaker 1: course human rights, working with vulnerable communities, including the lgbt
Speaker 1: q I community in the Middle East and North Africa.
Speaker 1: If I really want to continue doing this work, There's
Speaker 1: only so much that I can do from the front line.
Speaker 1: There's a lot that I need to keep underground, and
Speaker 1: my physical anonymity is becoming harder and harder with the
Speaker 1: types of different surveillance technologies that we have to protect,
Speaker 1: Especially knowing that I'm amongst millions of activists that are
Speaker 1: monitored and surveilled on a daily basis. It sounds massively
Speaker 1: inconvenient and like something that takes a lot of energy
Speaker 1: to try to remain anonymous in this way. Are there
Speaker 1: any advantages to it? Absolutely? I mean, it's the reason
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to you today. Um, I get to talk
Speaker 1: about this work. When people go and give talks, they
Speaker 1: know that this talk is going to be seen not
Speaker 1: just by the people in the room, but by everybody.
Speaker 1: Snippets of it are going to be on Twitter and
Speaker 1: on YouTube and wherever you know it's going to be hosted.
Speaker 1: And for me, I feel like it's going to stay
Speaker 1: in that room and I can make very dark jokes
Speaker 1: and get away with it. You really get to be
Speaker 1: your authentic self without fearing for your life. I've seen
Speaker 1: some of the work you've been up to and it
Speaker 1: is positively, ridiculously impressive what you've been working on these
Speaker 1: past many years, over a decade. Tell me about the
Speaker 1: work you've dedicated yourself to over the years. Sure, So
Speaker 1: I created Michelle dot org Um somewhere around two thousand five.
Speaker 1: During that time, you know, this was before Twitter was big.
Speaker 1: Facebook was still limited to a lot of colleges and
Speaker 1: things like that, and not just anybody can can sign up,
Speaker 1: So our treach was much more challenging because it was
Speaker 1: hard to reach the communities that you wanted to reach.
Speaker 1: What communities were you trying to reach? We were trying
Speaker 1: to reach ourselves. I mean, we were just young people
Speaker 1: at the time in a country that made censorship the norm.
Speaker 1: Where you go to school and there's certain information that
Speaker 1: you can't find and can talk about where you go
Speaker 1: in the household, and people are scared to talk about
Speaker 1: certain things. But you see the injustices around you, but
Speaker 1: you keep it to yourself, and it's a traumatic situation
Speaker 1: to do that. That's really what got me interested in
Speaker 1: creating a platform where when we see an injustice, we
Speaker 1: can talk about it we can talk about how migrant
Speaker 1: workers are being treated in our country, how corrupt leaders
Speaker 1: were getting away with insane policies that were keeping us
Speaker 1: away from our own dignity. We wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: and with communities that were completely visible at the time
Speaker 1: and had to be for security reasons. These were really
Speaker 1: the communities that we wanted to make sure that they
Speaker 1: felt welcome, that we wanted to build something inclusive, and
Speaker 1: that it wasn't going to be just about us. It
Speaker 1: was going to be just a space where we can
Speaker 1: just share our stories and speak with people that we
Speaker 1: were discouraged from even acknowledging. What are you not allowed
Speaker 1: to say that has such direct consequences? I mean, first
Speaker 1: and for most, it's it's not to democracy. We don't
Speaker 1: have to say politically, how things are run, what policies
Speaker 1: are being enforced upon. US government issues a statement, you
Speaker 1: do this, we do it. There's direct consequences we need
Speaker 1: don't So that's for me, a big part of the
Speaker 1: fear no fair trial. So if you're an activist and
Speaker 1: you get accused of something, sometimes even a tweet criticizing
Speaker 1: a member of parliament, you will get arrested for that
Speaker 1: and there are laws now that have been revised where
Speaker 1: there are certain tweets that there are social media crimes,
Speaker 1: but what makes a social media crime criticism. So it's
Speaker 1: a scary situation to live in that type of environment,
Speaker 1: and it's not something that is unique to Behrain, it's
Speaker 1: really everywhere we went. So even when we would travel
Speaker 1: to neighboring countries, we have to be very very conservative
Speaker 1: in what we are expressing because as much as we
Speaker 1: are changing, we are getting a lot of pushback from
Speaker 1: really well resourced countries. I mean, these are countries that
Speaker 1: are spending billions of dollars on surveillance technology from some
Speaker 1: of the most sophisticated companies out there, whether there Israeli
Speaker 1: companies that specifically build surveillance videos and tools, and or
Speaker 1: u S companies actually that are not being held accountable
Speaker 1: working with repressive governments like this, that are putting the
Speaker 1: lives of activists at risk as it means they get
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So that type of
Speaker 1: fear really gets to you. Or we wanted to be
Speaker 1: sure that we could creatively bypass a lot of that,
Speaker 1: and that's why we turned to music. That's why we
Speaker 1: turned to gamification. That's why we turned to art, because
Speaker 1: we're trying to do things in such a way where
Speaker 1: it's not just a group of investigative journalists who are
Speaker 1: going to publish this bombshell report through Human Rights Watch
Speaker 1: or something like that. Of course this stuff is important,
Speaker 1: but this is also the stuff that will get you killed.
Speaker 1: So we wanted something in the middle. We didn't want
Speaker 1: to get arrested. At the same time, we didn't want
Speaker 1: to stay silent and therefore complicit. Everybody I know would
Speaker 1: be in jail because all we do is mouth off
Speaker 1: on the internet against people with power. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: It feels literally foreign. We'll be right back. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about one of those platforms that you helped create.
Speaker 1: Tell me what Awah is and where did the idea begin.
Speaker 1: So it began in two thousand nine, and it began
Speaker 1: as a platform for the lgbt Q plus community in
Speaker 1: the Arab region where we could just share stories, share
Speaker 1: support um, share resources, and really just build a supportive
Speaker 1: network where we can be who we want to be
Speaker 1: without the fear of bullying, prejudice, trolling that we saw
Speaker 1: was prevalent in many of the other platforms. Everywhere we went.
Speaker 1: We felt punished, we felt humiliated, we felt threatened, and
Speaker 1: it was really tough because you can build, you know,
Speaker 1: you can go on Facebook, and even when you create
Speaker 1: those private groups, a lot of the times, what we
Speaker 1: saw was a lot of them were being deleted because
Speaker 1: oh you this is against community policy and they're not
Speaker 1: obligated to explain any further. They had a lot of
Speaker 1: moderators in the region, which we felt that for them,
Speaker 1: being queer was against community policy because it's against cultural norms.
Speaker 1: We thought, okay, look, nobody out there were sitting saying, hey,
Speaker 1: let's design something that a bunch of queer Arabs can
Speaker 1: really Also, you know, nobody's sitting there and saying, well,
Speaker 1: what about this community, what about this small niche? You know,
Speaker 1: let's put monetization aside and growth metrics aside, and let's
Speaker 1: put the people. Nobody is going to think that. Why
Speaker 1: do you think it wasn't in a Twitter, for example,
Speaker 1: in their interest or Facebook and their interests to serve
Speaker 1: the queer Arab community. I mean, for them, it's really
Speaker 1: about us grow because it helps our strategic direction on
Speaker 1: how best and how quickly we can monetize a specific tool.
Speaker 1: That's the bottom line for them. It's not security, it's
Speaker 1: not community, it's not people like me. One time, the
Speaker 1: Committee to Protect Journalists invited a group of us to
Speaker 1: go and speak at Facebook headquarters at Twitter headquarters, and
Speaker 1: nobody cared. It was over like a lunch brown bag.
Speaker 1: Everybody was disappointed because they didn't get the sandwich order
Speaker 1: that they wanted, and they're just like, this is just
Speaker 1: a meeting for me. This is not a place where
Speaker 1: I'm going to come and somebody's going to try and
Speaker 1: push the boundaries for me. The designers were showing up
Speaker 1: and you could tell that they were just doodling and
Speaker 1: could not care less about what my colleague from Syria
Speaker 1: was saying about being hunted, what my colleague in as
Speaker 1: Our Beijan was saying about being arrested on a weekly
Speaker 1: basis and investigated. They couldn't care less. I mean, they
Speaker 1: felt pity, but one person would actually say, well, why
Speaker 1: do you use these tools for those purposes? That's not
Speaker 1: what we designed them for. You know what. Facebook is
Speaker 1: really a place where you can go and connect with
Speaker 1: the classmates that you haven't heard from in a long time.
Speaker 1: And so that was for us. That's them saying we're
Speaker 1: not building this for you, and we never will. If
Speaker 1: these are the people who are setting the rules, setting
Speaker 1: the stage, then that's all they're ever going to care
Speaker 1: about it. We can force them to care about us.
Speaker 1: That scene is so familiar and so infuriating. So so
Speaker 1: what have you built as a contrast? How does awah
Speaker 1: work and what is it providing for this l g
Speaker 1: B t Q plus community that a Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: wasn't willing to provide? Well, first of all, we spoke
Speaker 1: to everybody that we could. What are you using to
Speaker 1: find support in this space? And why isn't it working?
Speaker 1: And so that's that's where we started finding the void
Speaker 1: and what was already available. It's um, okay, we don't
Speaker 1: have proper anonymity. Facebook obviously for a long time, discourage
Speaker 1: an enimedia altogether. It was crazy, I'm not boarding a flight,
Speaker 1: I'm using you know, a social media site. And so
Speaker 1: for a lot of people that's really where the line
Speaker 1: was drawn and they felt that they just didn't have
Speaker 1: that security. So for us, what we felt was what
Speaker 1: if we built a platform where everybody was welcome, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't want to build something clicky and we didn't
Speaker 1: want to build anything that was invite only where somebody
Speaker 1: had to know somebody to know somebody to come in,
Speaker 1: because most of the time the target communities that you
Speaker 1: are scared to even express, sometimes to even come up
Speaker 1: to yourself. So we said, okay, you can log in,
Speaker 1: you can introduce yourself a little by little, based on
Speaker 1: the type of interactions that you're having. On the side,
Speaker 1: if you're posting something that's helpful, some people say they
Speaker 1: would mark that contribution as helpful, and that gives you
Speaker 1: more points. And based on the number of points you have,
Speaker 1: you lock more sections of the platform, for example, access
Speaker 1: to a page of resources where if you have three
Speaker 1: thousand points, now you can have resources organized by country,
Speaker 1: like in Lebanon, this is where you can go to
Speaker 1: do this. In Sardi Arabia this is a counselor that
Speaker 1: is very LGBT friendly, for example. And then you are
Speaker 1: able to create a chat room. You're able to join
Speaker 1: a chat room, all based on the different level of
Speaker 1: points that you have. And the thing is is, of
Speaker 1: course you can you know game the system, but it
Speaker 1: requires you to be super tolerant, supportive kind for like
Speaker 1: hundreds of posts, so that you can call somebody a
Speaker 1: jerk for one second before that you lose all your points.
Speaker 1: This is amazing you have You've increased the price of trolling.
Speaker 1: I mean it's exhausting. Basically, if you're going to effectively
Speaker 1: troll on this platform, you've got to go undercover as
Speaker 1: a decent person. Exactly for weeks. The most homophobic people
Speaker 1: in our communities won't even put themselves in that. But
Speaker 1: we have had a couple of stories where people would say, look,
Speaker 1: I came here to troll. I'm not gonna lie. I
Speaker 1: saw this, somebody posted about this. But when I put
Speaker 1: myself in that situation with fake support, I realized I
Speaker 1: was actually connecting with people. It was actually changing some
Speaker 1: mindset because they realized, wow, I'm talking to somebody who
Speaker 1: would rather kill themselves than come out, and they would
Speaker 1: really put themselves in that shoes, and they started empathizing.
Speaker 1: We didn't just want to build a place where it's
Speaker 1: an advocacy organization, it's like, recognize us, we need this.
Speaker 1: We wanted a place where it humanized the community in
Speaker 1: all of its different phases and with many different people.
Speaker 1: And we never wanted to say that this was a
Speaker 1: singular story. It was thousands of stories. I mean now
Speaker 1: we have about eleven thousand users. That's eleven thousand very
Speaker 1: different experiences. That clicks with me because as the other
Speaker 1: platforms are very flat and their incentive structure is around
Speaker 1: pretty much letting everyone do as much as possible, as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible, so there's no there's no investment. It's
Speaker 1: almost like when I go on a place like Twitter,
Speaker 1: people are showing up with such a disrespect because they're
Speaker 1: not actually invested in the platform. They haven't had to
Speaker 1: work for any of it. And so of course you
Speaker 1: can trash somebody else's house, and what you set up
Speaker 1: is a kind of a different incentive structure where people
Speaker 1: have a sense of belonging, they put time in, which
Speaker 1: is a form of investment. Here's what I'm not hearing.
Speaker 1: I'm not hearing scale, I'm not hearing growth. I'm not
Speaker 1: hearing maximize shareholder value. Like in the in the language
Speaker 1: of the commercial internet, this is small, this is cute,
Speaker 1: this is a failure. What why are you not building
Speaker 1: to make this the biggest, fastest, growing, most amazing thing.
Speaker 1: You've got all these great people, now add some zeros
Speaker 1: behind that eleven thousand. Why are you not doing that?
Speaker 1: Because scale is moronic. Honestly, every platform that has built
Speaker 1: for scale sucks. Either the people they're suck or the
Speaker 1: features suck, or both, more often than not both. Honestly,
Speaker 1: people always complain it's like, oh, the Internet is full
Speaker 1: of idiots, because that's by design. Mark Zuckerberg was very
Speaker 1: famed for saying, is oh, you have to move fast
Speaker 1: and break things. And the thing that you're breaking are
Speaker 1: people's confidence, people's spirits, people's banks. I mean, these are
Speaker 1: the things that you break, people's dignity, people's security. These
Speaker 1: are all things that you cannot build at scale, period.
Speaker 1: And so that's why the Internet today looks very homogeneous.
Speaker 1: And so when you move away from that, the Internet
Speaker 1: starts looking a lot better, a lot healthier. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. So you've painted a hilarious, truthful and clear
Speaker 1: picture a contrast and how the Internet has been built
Speaker 1: and a bit of how else we can build it
Speaker 1: with something with a platform like AWA, who's maintaining a
Speaker 1: Who are the people that have been operating it for
Speaker 1: the past decade. So we have a very small group
Speaker 1: of volunteers, primarily a lot of us are women women
Speaker 1: in Lebanon, we have women in Jordan's. It's not a lot,
Speaker 1: it's a small team, but we don't need a lot,
Speaker 1: and that's the beauty of it. And then we have
Speaker 1: a community of volunteers as well, and so these volunteers
Speaker 1: they show up and they help moderate some of the
Speaker 1: content just to make sure that people are not maybe
Speaker 1: sharing something like an address or outing somebody, just to
Speaker 1: kind of keep things a little bit more safe. But
Speaker 1: oftentimes they're also helping people with onboarding. Nobody's paid, and
Speaker 1: that's tough, but at the same time, it kind of
Speaker 1: keeps things sustainable as well, because you know that they're
Speaker 1: doing this because they too. They're doing this because they
Speaker 1: care about the platform, they care about the community, they
Speaker 1: care about the integrity of the information that's being shared
Speaker 1: on there. But it's it's all volunteers. That also is remarkable.
Speaker 1: I think two parts of that. One the human interaction
Speaker 1: uh and second is the role of women on the
Speaker 1: human side. So many of the platforms most of us
Speaker 1: are used to, we don't interact with people, right. They
Speaker 1: try to automate as much of the onboarding as possible
Speaker 1: to get us on as fast as possible. To get
Speaker 1: us producing as much as possible, Like we're factory workers
Speaker 1: on the Internet model that most of us experienced, and
Speaker 1: it's like, get on there, give us your data, interact,
Speaker 1: smash that like button, and to have a human slows
Speaker 1: all that down and makes it more intimate and again
Speaker 1: increases that investment. I think the role of women is
Speaker 1: also fascinating because in the very early Internet in the US,
Speaker 1: there's history in the early bullets and board systems and
Speaker 1: forums where women were actually about half or even a
Speaker 1: near majority of the users, and they were designing different
Speaker 1: types of spaces that weren't about scale, that weren't about
Speaker 1: aggression as much, and they essentially got chased out by
Speaker 1: a bunch of dudes who are like, but we can,
Speaker 1: we can maximize things. It's Graham. And so before the
Speaker 1: trolling and the abuse took over, there was a different
Speaker 1: Internet possible here, and I'm glad to see it. It's
Speaker 1: more than possible. You're building a part of it there,
Speaker 1: so thank you, But I'm I'm still curious, how is
Speaker 1: this all funded? Like how do you keep this all going? Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in the region, when you're building these types of tools,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to get them funded. And so that's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest challenges that we've had, but also
Speaker 1: the biggest frustrating points because we see the colossal waste
Speaker 1: that the philanthropic community in the global North, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, in the UK or Canada, but primarily the
Speaker 1: US were a lot of private foundations give a lot
Speaker 1: of money to people who don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: You see that also when people are trying to build
Speaker 1: a tech platform, it's like, well, that person had to
Speaker 1: have gone to Stanford and then went on to work
Speaker 1: at Twitter, and only they will know what and our
Speaker 1: blesbin may need. In Saudi Arabia, those are the people
Speaker 1: that helped destroy whether internet could be like and now
Speaker 1: we're paying them to do the same. But in the
Speaker 1: nonprofit industry. So it really kills us to see that
Speaker 1: when we go and when we're asking for funding and
Speaker 1: we have look, this is decades worth of work. I
Speaker 1: mean other people, they would show up with no track
Speaker 1: record whatsoever, But simply because of who they are and
Speaker 1: who they may know, they get access to funding a
Speaker 1: lot quicker. And not just access to like a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand These are people getting access to millions and millions
Speaker 1: and we see platforms low through fifty million dollars because
Speaker 1: again they were trying to do things at scale and
Speaker 1: not work directly with the activist communities, with the journalist communities,
Speaker 1: and they're not collaborating with us. So this is the
Speaker 1: thing that bothers me the most is a lack of
Speaker 1: collaboration and the fact that a lot of private foundations
Speaker 1: are now encouraging competitiveness. That's what's killing organizations. That's where
Speaker 1: you come in and they say, we want metrics, we
Speaker 1: want scale, and we want you to do it. By
Speaker 1: the way, in a very dangerous setting. Let's get as
Speaker 1: many LGBT people together to use the tool that has
Speaker 1: not doesn't have a proven concept, or has not been
Speaker 1: tested for security. So now we are putting lives at
Speaker 1: risk so that you can say that you were this
Speaker 1: many people. So, I mean, I'm just very frustrated at
Speaker 1: the current environment of philanthropy. I think it's so broken
Speaker 1: and they are so in denial that it is, and
Speaker 1: it's just upsetting. You know, something's got to give. You
Speaker 1: either remove the obsession with metrics, or you make sure
Speaker 1: that access to funding is equitable, that is generally inclusive
Speaker 1: and not just you want to fund the two token
Speaker 1: organizations that everybody fund to say well, we funded you
Speaker 1: know this and that organization, and that shows that we're
Speaker 1: not racist. You are still you know in many different ways, um.
Speaker 1: And I love reminding this. And by the way, that's
Speaker 1: another reason why sometimes it's hard to get funding, is
Speaker 1: because we became outspoken, you know for too many years.
Speaker 1: I was sitting and I was like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say anything, you know, because it's gonna ruffle their
Speaker 1: feathers and there they're not going to give me access
Speaker 1: to money. And then I realized, you know what, I've
Speaker 1: always been broken. They will never give me money. So
Speaker 1: now the gloves have totally come up. Every time I
Speaker 1: come across this, I tell them to their face, what
Speaker 1: you're doing is idiotic. You know, your strategy doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It hasn't worked for years, and you're part of the problem.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't bother me that they get Some of
Speaker 1: them actually say, you know what, we needed to hear this, um,
Speaker 1: and then they go back to not doing anything about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't get me started. Ye I mean this is I
Speaker 1: think I feel like I wound you yet. So so so
Speaker 1: what would it take for other social media platforms to
Speaker 1: create safe digital spaces, like I don't think they can't.
Speaker 1: Too late for them, Yeah, absolutely, I don't think they can.
Speaker 1: I don't think they will, and honestly, I don't think
Speaker 1: they should. I think it's time for other creators. If
Speaker 1: they work at these organizations and at these companies, then
Speaker 1: they feel I don't feel like I'm doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: leave it and create something else, and don't think that
Speaker 1: it's going to have all these different metrics to succeed.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if even you have five thousand super
Speaker 1: active users that are enjoying generally enjoying your tool, that
Speaker 1: are finding it super helpful, and you grow every year
Speaker 1: we grow by just a thousand users, just a thousand.
Speaker 1: We're at eleven thousand now. We've been at going for
Speaker 1: a little over eleven years, and that's just fine. We
Speaker 1: have enjoyed that type of growth because it's meaningful growth,
Speaker 1: and it enables us to test out these features at
Speaker 1: a scale that is reasonable and that is manageable, and
Speaker 1: that is more efficient and secure, and that's fine. I
Speaker 1: think we need to start understanding that the Internet is
Speaker 1: not what is already out there, and we stick to
Speaker 1: it that's not the Internet. Those are just tools on there.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like saying, there's all this land and
Speaker 1: we all have to crime ourselves into these two buildings
Speaker 1: because we can't build. Honestly, we need to stop looking
Speaker 1: at the Internet as if what can you do for me?
Speaker 1: What can you do for the Internet? What role can
Speaker 1: you play in building these communities? You know? Oh? You
Speaker 1: are you? Did you just John F. Kennedy quote the
Speaker 1: Internet as not what the Internet can do for you,
Speaker 1: but which you can do for the Internet? As you
Speaker 1: got me fired up. I mean, I feel like the
Speaker 1: parallels to what you're describing abound. If if we thought
Speaker 1: of the only way we could create food is through
Speaker 1: some giant agribusiness versus starting with our backyards and growing
Speaker 1: a few tomatoes, and it's not all our food needs,
Speaker 1: but those tomatoes are gonna be bound, right, It's gonna
Speaker 1: be amazing. Grow those damn tomatoes, you know, And every
Speaker 1: now and then you're gonna be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get some cilantro as well, and Parson,
Speaker 1: suddenly you see that vibrant, amazing thing that you don't
Speaker 1: have to go with somebody else to rely on and
Speaker 1: that is empowering. Sometimes we're like, well, we have to
Speaker 1: wait for that empowerment to arrive to us. We have
Speaker 1: to do that ourselves most of the time because nobody
Speaker 1: gives a crap about us the way that we want
Speaker 1: them to. We're never gonna be somebody else's priority. M
Speaker 1: So we're not saying completely dismantle it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know me, I'm on Twitter as well. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: you're going to grow tomatoes, but then you've got to
Speaker 1: go to the store and get something else, baking soda.
Speaker 1: I don't know something that you can make yourself. So
Speaker 1: it's it's really about creating that healthy balance, but making
Speaker 1: sure that you don't wait for somebody else to give
Speaker 1: you a voice. As for this show is called How
Speaker 1: to Citizen. We use citizen as a verb. Taking that interpretation,
Speaker 1: what does it mean for you? What is to citizen mean?
Speaker 1: It's to be responsible. It's to hold yourself accountable when
Speaker 1: you're falling short, and to hold others accountable when they're
Speaker 1: abusing your rights or the rights of those around you.
Speaker 1: It's the way that I can live with myself to
Speaker 1: wake up every day and say, I think I citizens
Speaker 1: my ass off today. You know, how can I citizen
Speaker 1: even better? And that's really where the tools come in,
Speaker 1: because it's not just about you, but sometimes it's about
Speaker 1: giving those in your position the tools to do exactly
Speaker 1: what you did and to facilitate that. People are going
Speaker 1: to be fired up when they hear you era, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna be like, what what can I do? Tell
Speaker 1: me what to do? How can we support your work?
Speaker 1: The most important thing is to help spread the word
Speaker 1: that scale is not good and to do it in
Speaker 1: any setting, in for profit setting and nonprofit setting. We
Speaker 1: need to get rid of that word or we need
Speaker 1: to reclaim how it is defined. The second thing would
Speaker 1: be build your platforms UM support open source communities because
Speaker 1: just finding places like that where you can contribute to
Speaker 1: a different kind of web that would be great. Um.
Speaker 1: You can do it with your skills, you can do
Speaker 1: it by spreading the word. You can do it with
Speaker 1: your money. Speaking of money, I've never seen note of that.
Speaker 1: I remember that actually you had tweeted about Michelle and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, you know, I just heard this talk
Speaker 1: and everybody should give this organization money. UM. I regret
Speaker 1: to inform you that nobody took you up on that offer.
Speaker 1: So this is ah. So this is the second opportunity
Speaker 1: for those UM. But you know, organizations like ours we
Speaker 1: operate on very little, and that's not by choice, but
Speaker 1: it is by choice that we will continue to work
Speaker 1: despite having so little. Well, Eestra, you are not alone.
Speaker 1: We hear you. We will get some money to you.
Speaker 1: This time my tweet failed, but I'm gonna blame the
Speaker 1: algorithm and the like and the lack of context. We
Speaker 1: have a lot more context here, is it magele dot org.
Speaker 1: Is that the best place to direct people? Yes? Or
Speaker 1: would be the best place UM people can connect with
Speaker 1: me if they want to support in any other way.
Speaker 1: And I will say that if you feel this time
Speaker 1: there will be diret consequences. I won't go into detail
Speaker 1: because this is there. And there goes the threat she
Speaker 1: promised when she when the videos off and she got
Speaker 1: that anonymity. Sometimes she makes really exactly and you know what,
Speaker 1: if somebody comes after me after this, I'll say it's
Speaker 1: a deep fake. There. Thank you, Estra al Chaffee, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for this time. I am fired up
Speaker 1: and ready to go good good and I hope you know,
Speaker 1: I hope you stay fired up and thank you so
Speaker 1: much for you know, amplifying the story. Um, this is
Speaker 1: always a great opportunity to speak with you. And it
Speaker 1: was definitely the least boring podcast have been a part of.
Speaker 1: So that's good, you know. Can you put that on
Speaker 1: our iTunes reviewed? How the Citizen the least boring podcast
Speaker 1: I've been a part of. Okay, if after that my
Speaker 1: social media following doesn't give money to ms all, Yo,
Speaker 1: let's just say we might not even get season four
Speaker 1: of How the Citizen because this is how you citizen.
Speaker 1: It's right there in front of you. So please don't
Speaker 1: make me look bad. People come on you. But in
Speaker 1: all seriousness, that's the kind of fire we need to
Speaker 1: truly think outside the box, or maybe, as might put it,
Speaker 1: smash the box completely. Next episode, we're speaking with Pia Mancini,
Speaker 1: another huge advocate of open source. I'm starting to see
Speaker 1: a theme here, and she's co founder of open Collective,
Speaker 1: an organization that enables collectives to receive funding without needing
Speaker 1: a legal entity or a bank account to do so.
Speaker 1: You can't beat the nation state, so stop trying build
Speaker 1: around it until it becomes obsolete. But the nation states
Speaker 1: weren't always here and they're not going to be here always.
Speaker 1: As part of how to Citizen, we want to offer
Speaker 1: you more than a chance to listen to cool conversations.
Speaker 1: We want to give you ways you concitizen. That's why
Speaker 1: we're building a universe of citizen actions over at how
Speaker 1: to citizen dot com. So for this episode, here are
Speaker 1: some things you can do personally. Reflect on one of
Speaker 1: you felt concerned for your safety and security online? What
Speaker 1: features made you feel vulnerable or exposed? Was it something
Speaker 1: you could control or was it outside of your control?
Speaker 1: Next type of action, get informed and question the idea
Speaker 1: of scale in philanthropy. I want you to check outs
Speaker 1: dot org, m A j a L dot org that's
Speaker 1: Esther's joint and take a look at all the platforms
Speaker 1: they create. Then, beyond Ra's work, when you're engaging with
Speaker 1: nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, take a look at who founded
Speaker 1: the group and who runs it, who's funding it. Then
Speaker 1: try to find groups that are run by people closest
Speaker 1: to the problem or experiencing that problem directly. Here's a
Speaker 1: great way to start that learning journey. Read this dope
Speaker 1: book by Edgar Villenueva. He's an Indigenous person, former philanthropic operator,
Speaker 1: and he's written this beautiful book called de Colonizing Wealth.
Speaker 1: I can't recommend it enough. Third level of the game.
Speaker 1: Publicly participate by challenging some of those philanthropic norms. Many
Speaker 1: of us support large organizations that emphasize scale and unsustainable
Speaker 1: growth in the way they try to help. Instead, I
Speaker 1: want you to consider getting as local and grassroots as
Speaker 1: you can. So I want you to do an extra
Speaker 1: favor to all of us here because you heard as
Speaker 1: recall us out. Donate dot org, m A j A
Speaker 1: L dot org. All this is available at how to
Speaker 1: citizen dot com. Find us on Instagram at how to
Speaker 1: citizen to share your thoughts, to learn from others, and
Speaker 1: why don't you post with that hashtag how to citizen
Speaker 1: goodbye for now. How to Citizen with barrittun Day is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio podcast and dust Light Productions.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Me Barritton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart,
Speaker 1: and Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Ali Kilts, and our assistant producer Sam Paulson.
Speaker 1: Stephanie Cohne is Our editor Valentino Rivera is our senior
Speaker 1: engineer and Matthew Laie as our apprentice. Additional production help
Speaker 1: from rwin Nicks, original music by Andrew Eapen with additional
Speaker 1: original music for season three from Andrew Clawson. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Joel Smith from I Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia
Speaker 1: at Dustlight Production