A Libertarian Socialist Response to the Enclosure of the Internet (and Digital Technology in General)

On this episode of Chaos and Conviviality, Dip and Scooter discuss the re-emerging wave of “bad internet bills” across the United States and the world. Dip explores what organizing against these restrictive internet policies might look like.

See time stamps below:

00:00: Introduction to Bad Internet Bills

25:50: The need for popular power in fighting these bills

30:00: Hot Take: Concern around social media addiction is a moral panic

43:15: Technology being used to manipulate genuine social grievances is not new

54:05: How to relate to tech in a helpful/positive direction

1:18:53: With popular power, what could a strategy to push bad on these bills look like?

1:23:00: The importance of genuine accountability in building popular power

This conversation is adapted from an essay linked here. 

Highlighted show notes (for full references/links, see the essay):

• Bad Internet Bills
• Blood in My Eye by George Jackson
• Seeing like a State by James C. Scott
• Low Tech Magazine
• Egoism and Cooperation

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Discord is expanding its sketchy AI-based age verification requirements. The restrictions for adult content will be required across the world with accounts designated as teen by default. This follows the lead of the legal mandates of the UK and Australia. Once it came out that Discord was expanding this program, Helen sued, including including a massive community backlash and leaks that revealed the third-party software had connections to Peter Teal and Palantir, which has clear implications for surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security at the very least. They've since backed off of this plan, but they have not discarded it. This should be thought about alongside the bad internet bills that have been floating around or are coming back up in Congress. Many of them revolve around repealing or amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, attacking both what is allowed to be posted online and online privacy in general. Specifically, there are 19 new federal digital media bills ranging from a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, COSA, updates to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPA. And I I might not be actually, you know, people might not call it COPA, they might call it COPA. I'm not really sure. But I'm gonna call it COPA. The App Store Accountability Act, the shielding children's retinas from egregious exposure on the Net Act. That's also or the Screen Act is what I've seen it more. Uh I've actually never really saw that full name until I was researching this.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah, the government loves their long names that turn into acronyms and that turn into like words, you know. It's so silly.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

It is silly. And then the last one, or at least, I mean, there's 19 of them, but the other one I was going to mention was the no fentanyl on social media act. Um, so there's a lot of bills. Um, and this is coming in tandem with you know, similar activities happen across the you know at the state level and across the world. You know, as we mentioned, this is coming following what's happening in the UK and Australia, which is kind of paving the way. But some other ones, I mean, in Virginia, there's a state bill approved that requires social media companies to verify users' ages, and it limits younger teens to one hour of use per day, which is subject to parental uh controls. This is currently wrapped up in court. Um, Utah is doing in um abstort laws. Brazil has introduced age verification for all operating systems. Um, that was actually two years ago that they kind of approved it, and it's coming, you know, the time for implementation is coming up shortly by mid-March. All these things together, I mean, these bills undermine encryption, they encourage the gathering of even more sensitive data and incentivize speed over accuracy, leading to shoddy identity and age verification systems. Going into this podcast, we want to just detail a little bit about each of these things that we're mentioning. And these will just again be surface level overviews. But let's go ahead and start with section 230, which we mentioned. Section 230 is a legal compromise that protects platforms, online platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content. So you think of the groups like Facebook, I mean, really any internet platform, right? They're not actually publishing that, and so they're not held accountable for the things, generally speaking, held accountable for the content on them. That being said, Section 230 allows them to engage in some content moderation. Without this piece of legislation, platforms would be forced to choose between acting as publishers, allowed to pick and choose what they host, but legally we're liable for whatever they publish, or anything goes with platforms unable to engage in even basic spam mitigating content moderation. We would have trouble posting on publisher-curated websites, and on other sites we'd have trouble getting drowned out by scams and hate speech. Um, so it's it's a repealing that would have large consequences for the internet. The next one I will talk about Screen Act with the long egregious name. Um, this is essentially online ID checks combining surveillance and censorship. These laws are already adopted by 20 states in the US, which require residents to provide sensitive information, a driver's license, or a face scan, simply to access websites and apps. These systems are vulnerable to hacking, putting this data at risk. It happens all the time. Unreliable and biased facial recognition technologies oftentimes deny residents of these states access to large sections of the internet. Requiring a website to implement an online ID check discourages users from interacting it, harming both users and content creators. These bills also allow the government to limit access to needed information, whether it's reproductive health care or information for marginalized communities. So the Screen Act is essentially the goal is to bring these requirements to the entire country. COSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, is a bill that aims to establish guidelines to protect minors from harmful media on social media platforms through a duty of care system and acquiring covered platforms to disable quote-unquote addicting design features to minors. It's you know predicated on kids' safety. COSA claims to make kids safer, but in reality has a lot of aspects of censorship that would give the government even more control over the internet. I mean, this is also ties into some of this age verification stuff, really giving parents a lot of control over what their kids are seeing, which we know in like in a lot of settings that's not ideal, right? And can prevent, can put youth in danger in various ways. Moving on to the next one, the Earnit Act. It's the Earnit Act of 2023 threatens to undermine online encryption by punishing companies that provide encryption services. And by repeating the same mistakes as a previous bill called Cesta slash Fosta, it would lead to widespread internet censorship and crackdowns on marginalized communities. When the Earnit Act was previously introduced in 2020 and 2022, it was shelved in the face of overwhelming public outcry and opposition from human rights groups. Lawmakers are now in the US are introducing it for the third time, hoping that it will pass. So there's certainly enough to like slide, you know, certainly enough happening to slide it in under. But I'll pass it to you, Dip.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah. And I definitely, you called out the Sesta Fosta. I've also seen this Fausta Cesta. So we're talking about the same thing when we mentioned that, to kind of highlight what it looks like when these types of bills go through. So Fosta Sesta amended Section 230, which you were just talking about back in 2018 during Trump's first presidency. And the intent behind it was to really like to quote unquote like stop sex trafficking, which is like, you know, such a big thing. It's like, how do you get there? But that's these the way these bills do is they uh underpromise and under deliver, I guess. But in reality, right, like that didn't happen. It seemed to make things worse, at least according to like numerous sex workers that I've talked to and that I've read about, right? It you know, limited speech online. Think of when Tumblr, you know, moved all their adult content when that was like a pretty core part of that space and community. It also has nullified uh like the quote unquote free speech protections around quote unquote promoting prostitution, which again, these are very broad things. And that seems like it's the intent, right? Especially if we think about it like being like the result is the intent, you know what I mean? And again, these proclamations are so subjective that they've end up, they've ended up leading to more dangerous conditions for sex workers and more sex trafficking, because pre-this amendment being passed, there were some ways in which, again, this isn't ideal, this isn't great or whatever, but there were some ways in which online spaces allowed within the context of that work, a little bit more safety, right? Um, I've heard it described as like, you know, there's maybe a lot of things happening in the dark, which aren't good. But if you are able to navigate that space, then that is can be beneficial in certain contexts. But like when the light turns on, it like rearranges everything because everything that was happening in the dark scatters to the wind, right? And so now all these different things that are happening are like in these untraceable spaces kind of thing, right? Yeah. And so like thinking about all these bills and the ways that various companies are kind of before they even get passed, right? Because a lot of stuff we've talked about has been kind of in gridlock in, you know, the government for a while. You see companies kind of preemptively passing or changing their technologies in order to like comply. And you even see it where, you know, maybe these types of things have passed in other countries, right? Like there's this preemptive kind of response to it. And I think that if our response to all of that is to like, you know, try to get our elected officials to be more accountable and not pass these terrible things, then we're setting ourselves up to lose, to put it bluntly. You know, I don't I don't think that's super helpful or useful. These initiatives, especially because these initiatives have like bipartisan support, right? Like people on both sides of the aisle, so to speak, are like, yeah, we're trying to, you know what I'm saying, set things up in this way. There obviously are dissidents and stuff, but like in a general sense, you know, these things have been pushed forward by the Democrats and the Republicans. And so, like, let's say, right? Like, let's say that even if we were able to push back against these bills being passed, maybe we will, maybe we won't. Again, we have to contend with the fact that these technologies are not just American, you know, like there are countries passing things in other places, like Scooter was talking about earlier, right? So we, you know, we're gambling with low odds in that sense, right? If we're if we're relying on trying to fight the legislative process on its own terms in that way. And if we're gonna gamble, you know, then like why don't we shoot for the highest odds, right? And so I'm also thinking about this through the lens of the fact that we are in Trump 2.0. And I think that situation speaks for itself, honestly. I think of, you know, this idea of Project 2025, which is a contentious idea of like, does he know about it? Does he not know about it? According to him, he didn't ever look at it. You know, it's a whole thing. But I think it's really important to highlight like a lot of the things that were said in that 900-page tone or whatever, like have been accomplished, right? And to me, my analysis on it is like this is a trend of trying to re-litigate like the 19th century, right? Where the US is orienting this very obvious, naked, imperialistic type of orientation, right? And obviously, one of the biggest things, and if you're an American person, uh, to think about during that era was like a civil war. Not to say that that's going to happen, but I just think that like they are really thinking of things in those terms, right? Like thinking of things as being that serious or dire or fragmented or however you want to kind of imagine that. And I don't mean to scare y'all or anything, but I just say that to say that like it's not it's not looking good. And that's been true, right? But I think that's especially been true, like, especially if you're not, you know, middle class or above, cis, straight, white, or some combination thereof. But like it's getting to the point where like even for them, it's getting bad, you know what I'm saying? And so with that, I really don't like the idea of like hoping that the government decides to eat itself or you know, mitigate or moderate itself as it's spinning into like obvious to white people levels of fascism, right? Like, how can that entity manage the crises that it's creating? That doesn't really track to me. That doesn't make sense. And I really think this is prudent. Like, this is a really critical thing to take seriously and to think about because obviously, given the results, the things that have been done in the past have not worked. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try them again or whatever, but it's just to say that like we haven't gotten the results we want as people who claim to care about, you know, uh liberation, abolition, emancipation, or just even less spicy ideas like freedom and whatever, right? The poly crisis is still here. I know that's a turn people up, but like I think it's like all of the issues being happening at the same time, like that's still true, even in spite of people constantly trying to lean into working with the state and getting elected to do this and that and the third, right? Um, so to take us back to these bad internet bills, so to speak, I think that you see the response to that them happening or them kind of coming onto people's radar, especially before Discord kind of announced that they were gonna go all, you know, um uh what's that movie called? Uh Minority Report or Majority, whatever minority report is the name of the movie, right? A majority report's like a talk show, I think. But anyway, like even before that, right? Uh, which is kind of a funny, you know, funny thing is like, you know, people tend to really orient in their self-interest, is something to keep in mind about all this. So there's apathy before that, ignorance, which is like, I don't know what this means. I don't really see how this matters, things are already getting bad, whatever, right? Um, and I think a lot of that stems from having a really faulty like theory of change or understanding of how things move in the world, basically, in a social sense, like what makes a society do X versus Y versus Z, whatever. And again, all of this really roots in like yelling at elected, right? It's like, is like if you center that, then like it's an indication at the very least that like you either don't have an interest in actually bringing about even like you know, sweeping reforms or whatever, or you don't really understand how that works, right? Because even that takes a lot of energy.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah, no, I mean, I some of the research we pulled from this was coming from that bad internet bills group, is all over the advocacy efforts. And yes, there's just no where do we go from here? Sign a position, exactly. You know, call your officials, and then what? Nothing, we're just gonna put that on our hands, like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

And and what that leads to, I think, is like again, because a lot of times people will do that and then not think about it, right? It's kind of like uh, I did the thing, I can dismiss it from my brain. But like for the folks who do think about it, is like if they don't come to a critical stance, it ends up kind of being a reinforcement of the one of the core things that people who believe in, you know, leadership in the sense of um specific people having power is like you end up having to hope for like a I don't I always get my Greek philosophers mixed up, so I won't go too deep, but like you you end up hoping for like a philosopher king, right? Somebody who's like really good and really smart and able to do the job of leading other people or whatever in this way that isn't bad or you know, isn't harmful. And like I just think that that's a dead end. I I feel like I may be repeating myself now, but I really think that's something to be mindful of. Um and so thinking through like all of these different uh things, right? We have these bills that are happening, we have wider context of the polycrisis, right? And we have the the majority of the response is like thinking about how to uh like basically use the state in order to make these changes, whether it's we're gonna overthrow it and like put our guys in there, whether it's we're gonna work within it to put our guys in there, and it usually is guys. That's why I'm using that language, right? Um, which if you couldn't guess is part of the problem. But it's it's really like all these things are kind of working together, right? And it becomes hard to even do what the like goals are, right? So like the goal of the advocacy is to protect free speech, for example, right? But like it can't even really do that, right? You can't reliably, consistently uh create that outcome, for one, because there's a reason that those things are being eroded, right? And then for two, it becomes you get so caught up in that work because it is work and it takes energy and it takes effort, right? And it takes labor that uh you end up having this kind of thing where it's like, oh, you don't even get to start questioning free speech as the goal and like as the thing you're shooting for, because that is something that's like, you know, in my mind, like a couple of floors underground from the baseline, right? Like it's it's like that is not something we should be putting our spirits and our like hope and dreams into, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

We've already lost if that's if that's the how we're I mean, that's how I see a lot of these like nonprofit advocacy organizations with the framing, you know, when we're looking at the top level when we really need to be going down to the roots. I mean, that's the whole fucking point of you know delineating what is radical and what's not radical, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Right. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely very frustrating. And like we could go into a whole thing about the concept of rights, which I definitely think, you know, if people are more philosophically minded or interested, that'd be an interesting thing to talk about because that is such an important thing to have people think about things. And I find it to be an example, right? Like of something that is very harmful to orient around because it is so, you know, so nebulous and amorphous in a way that orients people into again um validating the state, reifying the state, right? Um, and so I think that like with rights or whatever things like free speech is an example, um, we should be very skeptical of those things at the very least, because they always kind of seem to again exist somewhere, we can't reach, we can't access it, we can't modify it, change it, adjust it. And so we're able to kind of nebulously access our rights, so to speak, quote unquote, but then they can get revoked or changed or whatever. And we kind of were like, well, now we have to like fight for all that stuff again, I guess. Right. Um and so all of this to me indicates that it's not really a good approach to continually try the same thing and then like hope that it turns out differently because if it was if it was about that, then it would have happened, right? Like it's not about just like the labor because people will put a bunch of energy into something and then nothing comes out of it, right? So it has to be there has to be something else going on. Um, but I also don't want to like pretend that like uh there's no impact you can have, like there's no agency, right? Like people still do have agency. Um, and so I think the way to kind of split the difference there is like trying things that like we haven't tried before, or another way to think about it is like trying things in different ways or contexts, and like doing that with an awareness of what you're fighting in a like sober and serious way, in a way that isn't rooted in mythology or theology, right? Like, like it's like looking at the thing as it is and what it especially what it results in and what it does, rather than like what it could be if people were super nice and sweet to you or whatever. Um, and I think those things are important because it's like that's how you are able to decide what to do and like have it be intentional and have it not only be intentional, but like it's something that like you can feel good about bringing other people into, right? Because it's not like, well, this makes me feel good, so I'm gonna rope everybody else into it. It's like, well, maybe ideally it like not necessarily always makes you feel good, but you know what I'm saying? Ideally, we're doing stuff that is like um fulfilling our desire in some way, but like I don't think that should come at the expense of like other people's desires or turning them into like you know, operations or tools, right? And so yeah, I think the core thing to think about that, right, is like the you know, if you're more uh versed on like leftist terminology, right? Is like this is like an anti-vanguardist take, basically, is saying like other people, like just like you have ideas about how the world should be, and like you probably think that you're more right than most people. Well, maybe you are, right? But it's it's a question of like, well, I can't just like force those people to do that thing if I actually again believe in like wanting the world to get better because that's how the world already is, and that's how it's been, right? So, like if you just do that yourself, then it's kind of like, what's the point? You know?

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Yeah, no. I mean, you're getting to like prefiguration, like how do we build the world you want to see? You gotta do it yourself, and like not coerce others to do the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Exactly, exactly. And it's more sustainable that way, too. Like, like if you do something with me because you want to do it, then you're gonna probably do it better, and you're probably gonna be able to sustain it, and like our relationship will be better, which just makes that kind of work easier rather than like having some sense of like duty or you know, some kind of again, nebulous force animating you or marionetting you into these activities, right? Like, like I I really advocate for people to be rooted in their context, in their situations, and like in an understanding of what they want, we're always challenging that because if you're like I want a house and a car, and uh it's like, okay, well, then you probably have been indoctrinated a little bit too much, right? You need to work on that. But like, if you're like, I want to be happy, then it's like that's not a bad thing. It's just that like we have to really seriously navigate the things that get in the way of that, right? Like, what's preventing that?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Well and I think it's just worth emphasizing how I feel like that is the path forward, right? Because like the right in a lot of ways in the left, I mean, I mean, I guess the like liberal left, if you they're not really the left, right? If you and but that's a whole different conversation, but a lot of the motivation for a lot of these, you know, takes is things like patriotism, when like you actually get down to like is how does that motivate you in any meaningful capacity, and like right it's an abstraction speaking from experience, but like it does not motivate me at all to be proud to be an American. Like yeah, it doesn't do anything for me, you know. I also think like when I'm told you need to go do the dishwasher, or you need to go do X and Y. You even if like you immediately lose a little bit of luster for doing that action. And so I just want to like double double click on. I mean, I don't know, is that the phrase? I just want to emphasize your point on how do we, you know, do this in a non-coercive way and get people on board and like help them figure out and that's the whole point of the podcast, right? It's like how do we like build our analysis of these different situations and so that people can make decisions and like you know, ideally we're moving in the same direction, but like no one's forcing anyone to move in any direction, you know?

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think like the core thing, uh, because I I've been reading uh Blow to My Eye by George Jackson recently, and I think the core thing that I'm taking away from that reading is like um, and I think I mentioned him on the podcast before, which is kind of funny. Uh but uh Blood on My Eye, George Jackson, he kind of talks about how like the basic idea is like, look, like things are bad, right? And there's this fear of them getting worse. And so that is used as a reason to not do something when it's like the polarity is reverse there, right? Like it's like, well, things are probably gonna get worse. And so why don't we go, like, why don't we really address these things at the root so that we give ourselves a chance for them not to get worse for us as people who are especially multiply marginalized, who are on the you know, uh receiving end of a lot of these harms that happen, right? Um and and I think that's such a critical thing, right? Because like the way in which we start to build different relationships, the way in which we accomplished various, especially like social goals, right? In this conversation, if we want these like bad bills to not happen, right? Like, I don't want to pretend like, oh, that doesn't matter, why should you care? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's it's more of a thing of like, okay, like this is something you care about, kind of what we were just saying. This is something you care about. Okay, how can we actually do the thing? And then on in the process of moving towards that, we can say, wait a minute, it doesn't really make sense to be like, oh my God, free speech, free speech, speech, reach, right? Because then you end up in these situations where you're defending Nazis and shit, right? And it's like, hmm, I wonder if there's a contradiction here, you know, and so thinking about it, like, how do we start moving forward? And how do we get like the technology we use, the tools we use, the ways we're being kind of socially relating and the things we use to live and stuff is like how do we move into a direction that you know really allows those things to be helpful rather than harmful? Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Yeah. Seeing the script and knowing where you're going and the tangent we took ourselves on, I can see how you're getting back.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

You know, all these builds are happening. What do we have to do? Like if we want to have a chance to stop that.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, the short answer is like build popular power, right? That's like the pithy, boom, there's the headline, right? And so if you're like, what is that? I don't know what that means. Um, I have an idea what that means. How's it different than what the other stuff we're saying? Because other people will use it in electoral terms. And so the way I think about it, in the kind of like, you know, anarchic tradition, libertarian socialist tradition, is people who aren't elites and who also aren't specialists, right? Um, the ability for those people to like manage their own affairs, right? So whether you're thinking about like the land, obviously in the context of like freeing the land and land back, in the especially in the US and other settler colonial contexts, um, managing labor, so like worker ownership and stuff like that. Um, life, so not being necropolitical, in other words, not uh having the society be structured around like death and managing death and who deserves to live and who doesn't, based on like abandonment and environmental racism and stuff like that. So doing the opposite of that shit. And then living. So, you know, there's life, which is just the existing part, I think, and then living, which is like doing things you enjoy, having things that inspire you around you, being able to, you know, experience like the good things in life, so to speak, right? So I think having all those things kind of come together: land, labor, life, and living. Um, that to me is like the core popular power and is like what people are getting at whenever they talk about democracy, quote unquote, taken to its like most serious conclusion, basically, right? Um, and it also kind of hints at or indicates, right, if it's not clear, that power doesn't have to be equal to control and coercion. Um, which again, if we think about it in that kind of more uh myopic way, then that takes us right back to rights, right? Like having the right to do X, having the right to do Y, including the right to get, you know, the right people elected, right? Like hoping that we get progressives in office so that they can do all the uh emancipatory, egalitarian things that we want, right? Um and I think that if that's something we care about, the order should be flipped, right? Like, as in starting for popular power, building up from the grassroots, building up our power within like communal contexts, individual and communal context, and then being able to decide from there how you relate to the powers that be, right? Like the forces that be. Um, I think that we should take hammers to all that stuff, but I also am like looking at history, maybe I'll be wrong. I hope I get proven wrong, but like that's not usually how it goes, right? There's usually a dip bit of a combination of conflict and collaboration or you know, like uh some type of you know, management in that sense. Um, but all to say, like, I really think that we need to start from the grassroots. Um, and so in the context of taking stock of like the tech industry, that is what would allow for like effective resistance, right? Um, and I think this is important because the collective understanding of tech are much more shaped by like sci-fi and marketing rather than like what's actually physically possible or what's actually physically happening, right? Um, we're talking a lot about these different bills. So many of them are rooted in moral panics, especially around child safety.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Where like the sorry can you just detail like what like what do we mean when we say moral panic?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah, so a moral panic, um, if I had to kind of put it in my own words, is like is like weaponizing legitimate grievances into usually reactionary, even to the extent of being like fascistic responses or solutions, quote unquote, for those grievances. So for example, social media addiction, I would say hot take is a moral panic. Not because people don't have bad relationships with social media, whatever that means, right? But it's to say that like addiction is a clinical term that gets overused, similar to people, you know, misusing like, oh, I'm so OCD when I have to organize my, I have to I clean my room all in what at once today. So I'm no, that's not what that is. Okay. Um and so it's it's kind of that similar thing, right? Where um it again weaponizes something. And then it's like when you point it out, it's like, well, no, but like don't so do you think social media is good for kids? It's like, well, that's a that's a that's a poorly framed question, right? Because it's like, yes, there are bad things that happen. Yes, there should be uh ways in which we are more intentional with how we let our our little ones and young ones and younger ones relate to just unfettered access to information, right? Um, but restriction, I don't know if that's the answer, a lot, especially because it doesn't seem to really like like it's it's it's kicking the can down the road rather than like putting it in the recycling bin. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't really address why these things are happening, which are again societal issues. And so it's uh individualizing, it's uh reactionary response to real grievances, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Thank you. Flawed analogy on recycling, but it's okay. I get what you're going for. I'm just like joking about recycling sucks. Like not working. Anyways, that was great. Thank you for you know just elucidating what you know, moral panic. Um, but just so you're saying, you know, this child safety is kind of used as a moral panic, you know, like wedge to push forward a lot of these digital safety, digital privacy, like the bad internet bills that we're seeing.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yeah. And so it's like, you know, it's in closing the internet, which again never was truly open, but I definitely think there's like a qualitative shift that's happening with these contexts, you know, at least for different populations. Because again, the people on the front lines of this stuff have been trying to tell people for at least, you know, since I've been on the internet for the past 15 years or whatever. And so, yeah, there's like the internet's being enclosed in ways that don't even like, and then the results are not in the pudding, right? It's like our kids safer. And it's like, well, uh, uh well, uh, we just have to keep trying and doing even more draconian stuff. And it's like at a certain point, we gotta realize this is not what it's about, you know. Um, or that it's like either people are too incompetent to achieve their goals or they're malicious. And either way, we're getting boned. So I'm not even super interested in the answer to that question. We should like, you know, we should like focus on stopping the things that are harming us. Yeah, and I think this is a really important thing. Like, I think this is really critical. Because if you're like a trans teen, then it's like, what is the benefit? Um, and this is something Scooter was kind of getting into earlier. Is like, what is the benefit from like having your communities, which are often online, especially if you're not in like a place that's like a big city or whatever, you know, and you don't have a lot of folks who share your experience around you in that sense. It's like your spaces are probably online. Not to say it's perfect, not say it's good, but like that's kind of what it is, right? Um, so what benefit do you get from that being restricted, being policed, being surveilled, even more closely than the kind of baseline, quote unquote, like the ways in which people have gotten used to, we should say, right? Um, and again, like online space is not perfect. I am not pro, like, you know, absolutist, we need to blah, blah, blah, whatever. Um, and they're often really problematic. Like, I it's just so, oh my God, it's so bad a lot of the time. But again, doing authoritarianism and draconian policy measures to like fix that is like, oh, I'm trying to put the fire out. Well, if I put gasoline on it, then it'll burn quicker. And it'll, you know, it's like, well, I like no, like, that's not putting the fire. You didn't put you can't say, oh, once the fire's done, I put the fire out. Because it's like you're like, it doesn't make sense, you know. So I really think that these moral panics around tech and all these different things, right? They really have to be like avoided as in uh not ignored, but more like you cannot let yourself fall into those things. And then they also have to be combated every turn. And I think a lot of that looks like, again, being like not letting them use a kernel of truth or something that makes sense or as intuitive, like the internet's bad for kids in some senses or bad for kids, period, whatever you want to frame that as, right? It's like, yeah, that's probably like you could, you know, I'm saying you could put together an argument right in your head. That shouldn't lead people to, oh, therefore, we need to lock up all these kids' phones. We need to put, you know, life through 60 on their phones so we can know what's going on at all times, right? Like that's not, you know, A does not lead to B in that sense, right? Like it shouldn't, right? Um, and that I think starting to think in that way is like how we start to really decouple ourselves from these kind of paternalistic, adultist, you know, anti-child kind of orientation and postures.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

W would you say, I mean, like, because I think some of these moral panics can be really tricky in that like problem, they present problem, solution that seems reasonable. And like maybe the solution is reasonable, but it's the or I mean what am I what do I even mean when I say it's reasonable? I'm just saying that like sometimes it's not just the like you know, the parental restrictions, it's the things that that also enables like Trojan horses into the not to mention Trojan horse for the third podcast. But my point is, would you agree with that that like that's a difficult thing with some of these moral panics? I mean, I and I think that's a part of education, right? In my opinion, is that like you know, so we can identify these things, understand like what is the you know, if the you know legislature agrees to this thing, this thing's coming next, right? Like, yeah, is that a dynamic that you that makes sense?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Yeah, I think it I think it does. And like I think the the core there is to again hold that truth while not letting it overtake the uh the narrative or the framing. What I mean by that is like it kind of reminds me of like the the like first they came for the socialists or whatever, like like that idea where it's like, oh my god, the bad things could happen to you, and that's why you should be scared. It's like, well, yeah, but like of course the bad things can happen to you because they happen to someone else, right? And so, and so really rooting in this idea of like, if again from a selfish perspective, where it's like, yes, it's hard, yes, it's a lot of work, but if we are able to prevent these things early on, then like that saves us so much heartache, sweat, tears, blood later on. Because it's like we we get presented with a moral panic. Oh my god, social media is you know, they're keeping kids on there, they're you know, rewiring the brain. Again, you get you get into these very extreme. I'm thinking I always go to the extreme of that, but because it's like that is how people kind of I think the emotional or like the affective kind of like hook, right? Is like our kids, our kids, our kids. Um, but I I really think even in like genuine ways where it's like you know, uh various like algorithmic things, design choices being made to like keep people in these spaces for like long stretches of time and stuff, it's like that stuff should be addressed as like their own things, or not their own things in the sense of discreetly, but just in the sense of like we don't have to imbue that uh issue in our response to it with the oh, we have to protect the kids. Our our thinking should be like, how do we uh show up as accomplices to the kids? How do we allow them to, you know, given their position in society as kind of like a second, you know, second class or however you want to kind of frame that, right? They are a marginalized group of people, how do we enable their autonomy, enable their flourishing, right? And while showing up as people who have the benefit of experience on our side as adults, right, how do we like show up for them in ways that like bolster that rather than this kind of idea of like, you know, imagining like, oh, we have to, you know, help kids who don't know any better and like rooting in that rather than like understanding that that is a situational truth, if that makes sense, right? Like I think a lot of adults approach this from the perspective of um, you know, like what if uh if you're a baby, you don't know if the stuff in the oven is hot. And then that becomes like the core logic behind literally every draconian parental thing that happens. And it's like, well, yes, of course, if you're two and you don't understand fire, then like you won't know that fire hot and burn, right? Like, of course. But like, you know, not to say we should just let kids touch the fire, but it's more to say that like we need to really think about, okay, this is a this is a true like tension that exists, and it can either lead us into a direction where we're like draconian, we're passing on these things that also harm us, right? Because it's like if you're thinking about kids that way, then how are you thinking about people of different identities that you maybe haven't robustly done work to see as full people deserving of all the things you think you deserve, right? It it all feeds into each other, and so that's kind of where I'm going, maybe spinning in circles a bit here, but I really think it's important to like root in that like kind of youth liberation type orientation, because it's that is how we avoid this thing, right? And I think again, the hard part, like you're mentioning, is that like it starts from something that seems true, right? But it's like we can't like at each juncture, at each choice, if that type of thing is the logic, then it's like, oh, you actually aren't substantiating it, right? Like you're making a claim, but like you're saying, like, oh, well, since um, you know, a two-year-old doesn't know the stove is hot and I have to grab them up so they didn't touch the stove, therefore, my 17-year-old uh needs to give the government their ID so they can use Discord. It's like, huh? Right, and when we put in those terms, it's very obvious, right? But that's why people avoid putting in those terms because that would be like, oh, wait a minute, right? And you'd have to be someone who's very, very, very invested in the outcomes of something like that in order to like not acknowledge that as ridiculous in that moment. And so I think that's kind of what we're navigating too is like so much of this is narrative management, so much of this is PR, and we have to also figure out how to like not just take people at their word, right? Because a lot of times, whether they know it or not, they're feeding into those PR narratives, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:00

Yeah. No, I I think you like if I'm just gonna re-take it back, you know, take this little tangent and like re clear, like say it again, I guess, for clarification purposes. I'm understanding as if we're taking these moral panics, we're understanding, you know, I think the example that I, you know, mentioned that I think spurred some of what you're saying, right, is that like, you know, parental controls on digital devices, whatever, not the biggest deal. I don't really think of it like if I, you know, it doesn't really affect me. I'm not really that concerned about it from my own, like well, I am concerned about it because I know you know what we're talking about, and I understand it's you know not good and it's bad, it's bad for the marginalized people on that end. It's also bad for me in the long term. But I guess my point is that like when we're understanding these moral panics, having in mind like what is being proposed is affecting someone, right? And it's the axis of you know oppression and what are whether it's patriarchy, it's anti-blackness, like there's all these different axes of oppression. And if you keep in mind when you're evaluating a scenario, the most marginalized, I learned this from you.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

What is the essay that isn't published yet on our website that like you've published that talks about that really well?

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Uh I I don't even know which one it would be.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Yeah, I don't know if lost in the Google Docs of my brain. But um point being, like, if considering like the you know, when we're thinking about these different axes of oppression, like considering the effect on the most marginalized, I feel like that's just like a good like logical tool to evaluate a moral panic and come to a you know a good solutions framework to go forward. Maybe I'm like over applying frameworks, and like but that's how I you know I just think that's helpful. And like I think there's obviously a podcast essay to be made on that. You've you've written I've read it, so it can be done. Um do you want to respond to that, or can I go into the next thing?

SPEAKER_00 43:04

I mean, yeah, you can go to the next thing. I think that makes sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Okay. So Dip, is uh tech is allowing tech to manipulate genuine social grievances? Is that new?

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Oh my god, that's so funny. Yeah, I mean, the answer is no, right? Like, it is not. There is nothing new under the sun, as they say, right? Um, and like I just want to, before we go into this, like caveat that I'm not saying that these things aren't bad. I'm not saying that we should just deal with it. I'm saying the opposite, right? I'm saying that like by recognizing that the things we experience as bad or as new or as novel, quote unquote, in that sense, have histories. And those histories both help us, at the very least, look at like, oh, wait, when it was in this version in this year, what did people do back? Then, how did that go? Right, like it at least allows that, and at best or in better situations, it allows us to like more robustly analyze like why that happens, what's making it happen, and all that kind of stuff. So I still have to say that hopefully you'll be able to stick with me when we start talking about history a little bit here. And so I think the core of how I think about this is like there's science and there's technology, right? And technology, I just basically think of it as like applied science. And science is basically just at its most broad, is like knowledge, right? It's like having information that is like quote unquote true or whatever, right? Um, or like works for some purpose, right? And apply again, applied science, technology, right? And so all of both of those things have kind of always been, we could say, uncomfortably implicated in like imperialism, right? And empire stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:54

I've never heard it called that empire stuff, but yeah, I like it. I mean, I don't like it, but like oh, you like imperialism now?

SPEAKER_00 45:02

No, no, no. Anyways. So I think of stuff like Caravels, which were these uh Portuguese ships from the 15th century, that basically allowed them to like go down the Atlantic coast of Africa and like do the you know slave trade, right? Like, like I don't, I'm not laughing at this as funny because it's like, oh my god, it's like just as a clear example of the importance or the the ways the technology impacts society and how things change in that way, right? I also think of like the field of botany, um, which had a lot of close proximity to plantations, whether it was like African practices being brought to America, whether it's literal like plants and stuff, whether it's all these different things, right? Whether it's you know botanists using or deploying different crops on plantations and figuring out how to kind of create the kind of you know monocrop factory model that we know today. Um, I mean, race science is an example of like science gone wrong, right? Like and how the quote unquote objective pursuit of knowledge can like be wedded to empire, which if you know anything about the rhetoric around technology, probably sounds familiar. And I think the sad thing, right? Again, I kind of describe this as history, and it is history, but that doesn't mean it's like stuck in the past, like back there in the back of our, you know, put in the back closet, we don't have to worry about it. Uh, because we have things in the present day, right? Like the military-industrial complex, where the military has like an outsized influence on the economy, the ecology, all those kind of things, right? Um, and because in this modern context, colonialism has kind of figured out something that's been trying to figure out for like a while. Uh, I'm thinking along with uh James T. Scott seeing like a state in this idea, but like treating people as data to be extracted from, right? Like has always kind of been a thing because it's the whole point of like a bureaucracy is to like look at the world and like simplify it so that they can do bureaucratic stuff. And like computers facilitate that really well, right? Because they run off of data.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Everyone just wants all these government people, they just want a big dashboard on the people.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

And it's like from like a business-y background where like a dashboard tableau was a thing, like yeah, dashboards like Power BI. Yeah, like everyone wants a that like our governments want a dashboard on us, you know, and then we can manage it really. I shouldn't say we, they can manage it, you know, all nice and tight and pretty.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

Right, right, right, right. And and like you're you know, you some people maybe are like, why is it bad that Google has my data? Or maybe they know it's bad, but it's kind of like abstractly bad, like in the way that you know, when you get a chill when like there's a ghost in your room, kind of feeling where it's like, what does that what does that mean? I don't know, like, you know. Um was that a weird thing to say?

SPEAKER_01 48:06

I would try to connect that one in my head. Like, but I I get what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

It's like goosebumps, you know, like when you get goosebumps.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

It's like that's it's not, it's like not, it doesn't hurt to like have my Google Doc. It's actually quite easy to have all my in my Google Drive.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

And you know, it you're right. That's actually like low-key of great analogy.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Yeah, and it's like it's one of those things where it's like if a malevolent spirit or you know, Google decides, hey, this person's an anarchist or this person's a dissident or whatever, term or whatever, they say, oh, subpoena, boom, here's all your data. This is this is this person's habits, this is where they go, this is what they eat, these are the ads we're sending them, or whatever. Yeah, and it becomes this very um, you know, for their purposes, really useful. And then the harm, and again, going back to the James C. Scott thing, is like it also impacts how we think about it ourselves and stuff and how we relate. And it and it ends up replacing like relational knowledge with like more abstract and more universal knowledge. And so, like instead of you know maybe being able to like navigate your uh city by like um monuments or something, or like you're like, oh, like go down this street and then turn at this thing, it's more like the way that the GPS would describe it, right? So, like, you know, in three and point three miles, turn on blah blah blah, right? And like again, not to say that stuff isn't useful, because if it wasn't useful at all, then it like it would implode on itself, probably, and like we wouldn't have to worry about it. But it's to say that like you do kind of lose something when everything is being subordinated to its ability to be turned into data, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

Um and and so I think thinking through all of that, thinking through military industrial complex, data colonialism, and seeing that as a kind of like continuation of statecraft, of managing societies with states and in the modern day mostly nation states, right? I think we have that on one side. And then we also have to like contend with, you know, in that vein or going down that path, like sci-fi nightmare kind of stuff, right? Like, um, I mean, I could just say quote unquote AI and like probably end the sentence there. But I'm thinking specifically of like the anti-black and anti-indigenous like predictive policing, which is meant to like prevent crimes before they happen, which again is like minority report, again, like hello, like what are we what are we doing?

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Inherently dystopic. Like, I don't think there's any way to sell that in a way that isn't dystopic. If you make it, it's all about the like, you know, I guess you could sell it to some people who aren't really, you know, meaningfully thinking about it as a positive. I guess that is sold to some people as like a positive.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Yeah, and for the people who aren't virulently like they don't have an identity based to being anti-black or being anti-indigenous, right? It's a thing of like you get a lot of the um that's where they start tapping into like the libidinal economy effective economy, like you're people being scared of being like attacked by criminal out people, blah blah blah, right? It becomes this thing of like managing uh like these ideas of safety, these ideas of security, these ideas of you know, uh like uh just stability as well, right? Like people don't want things to be chaotic and unstable. And so they say, hey, if we're stopping crimes before they happen, then that makes you more safe. That makes things more stable, that makes you more secure, right? It it just it just becomes that kind of thing, right? And so I think that's like and that's just like people, right? Not say just people, but it's also the environment that's getting harmed by this kind of push into like all these various technologies. I think of like data centers as a core example, where they obviously power the cloud, they power all these like servers that the internet runs off of, and then with AI kind of quote unquote AI. I feel like every time we say AI, we have to do quote unquote, because even calling it AI is PR marketing, like we were talking about, because it's like it is artificial, but ain't nothing intelligent about it. So I don't know why we call it that, you know?

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Yeah, plus one.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Yeah, yeah. And so all of that, you know, those that energy being used, those resources being used are really bad for the environment, obviously, right? But I think it's really noteworthy uh that like all these water, like in various places, there's water that gets used up, even in like drought zones, right? Like there is these ways in which you know things that could be used for something that's actually like directly useful and impactful to people is kind of being used in order to, I guess, again, like enrich people who already who at this point is just like a game to them, right? And so I think that again, I don't want to separate though, like I don't want to separate like the harming people and the harming of like the ecology because those things very they intersect for all of us, but they very clearly intersect in like frontline communities or like communities who are on like you could call it quote unquote like the frontier of these harms, whether that's you know, I think of like toxic e-waste uh popping up on the shores of like Ghana, or I think of like in um Memphis, right? Have like black communities being in close proximity to these data centers, right? Um so that's like a very clear, like boom, people and planet being harmed at the same time, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:40

Yeah, I mean it's all all over. I mean, that's a massive history of that. Like you know, I think coal, like just the fucking coal transport plants and like the inner inner inner highways, right? Yeah. But tell me, like, there's different ways to relate to technology, it doesn't all have to be all bad, right?

SPEAKER_00 54:03

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's kind of like the core point of cleavage, at least the way I personally think about it, is like people hear me say all this stuff and they're like, oh, so you're like those people from Dune who like want to destroy all the computers. And I'm like, I'm willing to do that, that's what it takes. Like, like I would rather if you asked me computer or person, hmm, hmm, mm-hmm. I wonder what I'd think, you know. Um, but I don't think that's true. And like, I don't not that I you know, only do I think that's not true, but I think like I don't know, I have a hard time imagining that the possibility space for that. Like, how do we actually destroy all technology? I don't know what that means. But I really think that like, again, there are people who are doing really cool stuff. I think that permit computing is a really cool thing to look into. Um, the basic idea there is like think of like however you imagine a computer being made from like a material standpoint is like the opposite direction. So it's thinking about how can it be ecological? Um, how can it be, you know, not oriented in these kind of like growth mindsets where it's like each year you have to get a computer with more RAM and more processing and more, more, more, more, more, right? It's really orienting in a way that like allows them to be uh computers to be repairable, like I said, ecological, accessible, and like really rooted in utility in that way, right? It's like very much an appropriate technology, uh convivial technology if we want to use that term.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Uh we want to use that term, we do want to use that term.

SPEAKER_00 55:24

Yeah, yeah. Uh very much uh like trying to be in harmony with people and planet, right? Um, and so yeah, it's it's that's the approach, right? Um, and then for like more specific examples, right? Like one of my favorite websites, uh Low Tech magazine, it's just very interesting to look at with like various, like basically like quote unquote archaic or older like alternative replacements for things, like various random, quote unquote modern industrial amenities, right? Um, and it's very interesting. So, like, you know, stuff that you could probably imagine, like, oh, you should ride a bike instead of a car or whatever. Um, but even weirder things like, oh, what if people use like bow and arrows instead of like guns and stuff? It's just like it gets really zany, and so it's a it's a cool thing. And that website is run on solar, so like that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Yeah, I'm looking at removable textile layers, keeping homes warm in the winter in cool in the hall. Yeah. Who would have thought?

SPEAKER_00 56:19

Yeah, there's another one kind of in that category where it's like um basically like personal heating. So, like, like you have like something on your body, like I forget what it is. Like, maybe you like boil water, you put like a pouch. I don't remember exactly the mechanics, but it's like the idea of like rather than having like the room be heated or like the room be temperature regulated in that way, like using AC or central heating or cooling, whatever. It's like you have these like personal or more natural apparatuses or less uh technologically complex in that sense, uh things, so that the whole room doesn't have to be regulated, it's just you, um with like a personal space heater.

SPEAKER_01 56:57

Like I those things are wicked. I think they draw a lot of electricity. But I'm like, was it less than like if I were to do the whole space?

SPEAKER_00 57:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very interesting, very interesting. But yeah, like that website, like I said, it's run on solar. And then if the weather's bad enough for long, it has a battery, so it's not like immediately shutting off, but like if the weather is bad enough for long enough, then it'll go off. And I think that's an interesting thing to think about. It's like, do we need websites to be always on all the time? Yeah, probably not, right? Um, and I think that like it's really interesting because there's also different things, like people are building, you know, computer parts from or sorry, building like mesh networks from computer parts they've salvaged. And so again, this like idea of repurposing what already exists, imagining you know, people going into landfills and e-waste spaces and like salvaging materials from there. That's kind of also a perma-community idea. It's like really trying to be, you know, intentional and not thinking about it starting from scratch, right? Because we have all these computers that exist, we have all these technologies that already exist. And like we should be really questioning if we should continue down that path of making more things in that way, especially making more things, period, but especially in that way. And we should also look back at like, what have we made? How can that be repurposed and retrofitted for our for our purposes? And like, how can that be done in a way that's like ecologically harmonious rather than like again, I need the best computer with all these rare materials so I can like play this new video game at the most like beautiful settings or whatever, right? Like the graphics can look as good as possible. It's like, is that really necessary? No, right? Like, you know, so thinking about that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 58:38

Yeah, and also I think it's like these things are gonna happen to us. Like we're gonna these decisions to use technology in these ways, that decision is gonna be forced upon those of us privileged to have access to those technologies, really, these things. It's gonna be forced on us at some point.

unknown 58:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:58

I mean, I guess it's it's a question of who you are, because I mean, I'm sure I'm using we very broadly when I say that, but um, I guess I'm just saying we would do well to learn these things, not just because they're good for the environment, but because at some point they're good for us, they're good for our you know, sustainability. Like the supply chains are not gonna last forever, like the way you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

And so again, like I'm not saying this to be like actually technology's good, y'all. We don't have to worry, right? That's not my intent. You know, like I think that if we have to score the goodness, uh given again the history section of what I was talking about, military industrial complex, slave ships, botany as a per like science, right? Like, it's like uh the the score sheet would be pretty bad, right? Um, but I don't think that like the stories end it, right? Like, like it, you know, none of these things are totalizing or complete, so they haven't quote unquote like won yet. Like we can still relate to it in different ways, potentially, right? Um, and so the path towards that, I think, and like the big question around that path, it like relates to like power and control, right? So, like for the harms that are happening, how might those things be impeded? How might they be stopped? And like, how might, again, these flashes of hope that I'm highlighting, right? Is like, you know, websites that aren't always on, using alternative technologies, thinking about salvaging and repurposing and retrofitting computers, right? Like, how can these little moments become, you know, like more constant or a more all-encompassing source of light in this like space that I would say is like pretty dark, right? Yeah. And I think the core of that is something that we kind of talked, is basically what we talked about um in the episode around Mamdani, where it's like thinking about like, again, democracy in this expansive conception that we described earlier, kind of being built up through cooperative businesses, banks, organizations, and then also having unions and union co-ops be working together with that. Um, I kind of have a hard time understanding why the union space and the cooperative space are so at odds, but whole nother conversation. So I'll leave it alone. Um, and I think that at the same time as like labor or economic uh democracy is being built in that sense, uh, communal democracy should also be built like alongside it, right? And then those things would link together, which will allow for um communal power to be built and allow for like the aims of those domains to be reached, right? So like the economic side would make things that are actually useful to the actual people in the community, and the community would be able to decide or like have input on like what gets made in a way that like is in line with both what those businesses are trying to do with what the community wants and then like what makes sense in a you know biological sense or uh ecological sense, I guess, right? Like it's not like, oh, let's make more, I don't know, super disgusting polluting things. It's like, well, no, let's not do that because that's bad, right? But now and that becomes an easier thing to navigate when it's like the people who are deciding are the people who are impacted, right? Because it's like nobody's gonna want to put a data center in their backyard, right? Kind of thing, right? Um, and if no one, if if it's all decided in a non-hierarchical way, and everyone is like, I don't want that thing in my backyard, then maybe you do get stuff like, oh, then we end up in space or whatever with that stuff. But like realistically, at the very least, it's like if everyone's able to decide that, then no one's gonna put in their backyard, right? Like if we're able to do this non-hierarchical relating thing. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:35

So basically worker cooperatives everywhere, as much as we can do. And utilizing, I would think, union, like union organizing. Yes. I've seen some work around like how do you, you know, support all these different unions and like, you know, in a specific industry, right? You have, you know, a network of these different like workplaces, some of which are work cooperative, some are like union bargained places, whatever. Um, and like showing like that you have that hub and you're showing the people who work at the union thing, oh look, this worker cooperative model is pretty cool. Like, how how do we make that happen at this other place, right? Whether how does that happen? Does it you know buyout or does it happen another way?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:18

And like I think we just the task to me feels like we need to how do you build that up? Because it really is quite sparse when we start thinking about cooperatives and like throughout the US, and you know, private it's not like out there. Like people like you go to your business school, there's no worker cooperative in your MBA course, you know, no one's worker cooperatives. So I think there's a lot of work to be done on that end, but maybe we shouldn't be like in some I don't know. There's MBAs, obviously, are like a thing that uh we probably don't need more of.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

And I think again it's a dying thing to go, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think it like the way I think about it um is really like having a really like confrontational posture. That doesn't mean we're always fighting, that doesn't mean we're always attacking everything all the time. I think we should be much more willing to do that than we often are. And I'm saying we because most people I would say are not willing. Um that is one time I would use the very uh dangerous we. Um, you know, but I I really think that like, you know, like a lot of people's industries, I'm like, like you don't, like I'm not super interested in like organizing Lockheed Martin, right? That's not to say that like there's no inroads into that, but it's like people get so caught up in them being workers that it's like, well, what working on what? Like that's the question we also need to ask. It's like working on what? If you are making bombs, then there has to be some questions, right? Like there has to be some things like asked, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Yeah, and I mean I think it kind of gets at the point of what you're kind of getting at. I said that weird, but you're getting at this point that like if you have a true like you know, democracy in the workplace, you probably like you're gonna believe in the power of democracy. And I know it's a fraught word in this context. Like, what is that? I guess what I'm saying is if we're talking about democracy in the workplace, we're making the bet that like the odds are you're not gonna see a worker cooperative oil and gas like processor or refinery. Like there are things that like if you open it up to enough people, it doesn't make any like you're not gonna find the grounds to do it. Yeah, so like a place like Rocky Martin, like yeah, it's just not even like a you know who's gonna go start organizing for where like I don't know. I'm just pointing out the like the that's the thesis, right? Is that like if we have more um actual democracies, bad things will happen less.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:50

Yeah. Yeah. And then it gives us and and because that's not the it's not a situation of um If we have more democracy, then the bad things won't happen, right? But like having spaces where power is more diffused allows responses to be more agile, more robust, and it like enables deeper, like and more genuine accountability, right? Because it's like it's like they keep people can't hide behind all these like social hierarchies that they're able to at present, right? Um, and like the power of differentials that exist at present, right? And so, yeah, like from there, I would say, right, like again, going back to this idea that um building popular power is having power. And so from there, decisions are able to be made, right? Then that is a more much, much, much more fruitful space to like engage with the system as it is, right? So, like, again, I'm an anarchist, I don't advocate for this per se, or like I don't think this should be centered. It's more so like if you are in a space with multiple people with varying views, is a thing that will happen. And if you happen to be in proximity, here's a way to like make it less shitty, kind of thing, right? But like, here's where politicians can be engaged, right? Like, I think that's kind of like the the core thing is like through this lens of popular power. And so, yeah, like starting off, right? Like, maybe these groups are voting blocks, interest groups, right? And then they can become, they can kind of like take over, especially in smaller situations, or especially like as the popular power structures become more powerful. It's like you can start eroding like the economic base of these people. Um, and I think that like that allows the popular power orientation to be able to like kind of decide what happens with them, right? So it's like you can like divest uh from those folks, um divest, like divest, revoke support, especially if they like that's kind of the accountability, right? Like you can do those things as a way to like the threat of that basically keeps them kind of on code with what they're doing, right? And I like want to definitely highlight that like what I'm describing and what have been describing, what we've been describing, is like slow, like it takes a long time, it's like arduous work, and that is kind of its biggest drawback, I guess, is like it takes a long time for the chance of succeeding versus like doing something fast and indefinitely failing, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:39

Oh, and I'm also curious. I mean, like, I feel like throughout American history, you can see you know, bases of what we're kind of talking about, and like maybe it's not formally cooperatives, but like for all intents and purposes, like cooperatives and everything but name. Um there's these different like black Tulsa, right? And I can't all these different like places that just get wiped out. So I think that's also like when these things just take so long, like it's almost starts to look like a longer extended version of like electoralism, and that like we put a lot of effort into something where we know once it becomes like a tsunami advocating against this, like obviously it's just a question to be asked, right? To be how do you prevent, you know, if we're putting 10 years into like this cooperative federation assembly based project, how do you prevent it from getting just like knocked out like they have been in the past after 10 years, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

Yeah, yeah. And I think I mean that's such a like big, like that's such a core thing to figure out. Um and I think that it is something that like so much of it can be figured out by being like basically as radical as possible. And so what ends up happening often in those cases, um, especially with radical projects, is that like there are cases where it's just like you know, people are physically overwhelmed. So like, you know, in the context of so many of the like you know, something like the Tulsa massacre, like right, it's like just sheer numerical force and force of arms just like dominates a space. But like many struggles, and you could, you know, say that and this is not to put blame on people who experience these things, but it's more so to say that like often conflict exas as conflict exacerbates certain like internal contradictions. So like if a group doesn't have a robust analysis of patriarchy, for example, and marginalized gender people um are doing all like the social reproductive labor, the care work, then like that is a point of weakness for the organization. And so when, right, it's not if, but when the whoever the powers that be are like, uh-uh, y'all are moving too egalitarianly, we don't like that, right? Then and those systems get stressed, they experience stressors, then it's very easy for that to become like a break point because again, there's a weakness there. And so I think a big part of it is like pushing the analysis as far as we can possibly push it, and then constantly testing it against the world itself and experiences, while kind of again keeping core values in mind that like remind you that like you know the means don't justify the ends, right? The means and the ends are unified that reminds you that like autonomy is critical, that reminds you that again, like what I would say is like transfeminism is critical, right? So having those things kind of at the core and and and taking them seriously and like trying to navigate in a way that puts them at the fore, and it's constantly railing against various common sense ideas that are reactionary, even if it's under, you know, subconscious or underground or whatever. Um, I think that that is like a core way to do that. And then it's also like alongside all of that, alongside kind of bolstering the internal mechanisms of the thing, it's also being like, we have to divest from more colonial conceptions of like space and time, which again is very philosophical, and so I might lose some people here, but I think it's really important to say, like, you know, like, yes, your life is your life, and you should live it in ways that fulfill your desire, but your desire should be, and at least in some sense, I think, and maybe this is me being too descriptive with this or too prescriptive with this, but it should not be rooted in other people's immiseration, right? And so part of that is being like, I'm in this for the long, long, long haul. Yeah, you know, like like 10 years ain't nothing in that in that context, thinking about multiple generations in the future, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:12

So yeah, that makes sense. No, and I don't think you're being too prescriptive in saying that like we should aim our desire in a way that isn't reliant on the miseration of others, but I think it's the thing, I think the reason you feel that, or like the reason you like hesitate is maybe because to really do that is like really difficult.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:36

Yes, yeah, yeah. Like again, like we are on like we are both on digital devices right now, as an example, right? And it's like slave labor probably went into those things, right? Like, like, you know, I haven't lived into the thing about my specific computer or whatever. But it's it's like it's like that's not to say it's it's nothing, that's not to say, right? I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying like that is how embedded these things are, and it's not to necessarily point fingers or whatever, even though some fingers should be pointed more often, I would say, in a general sense. And like if somebody was like, hey, that's fucked up, then I what what do I look like getting mad about that? Because it is like it is fucked up that I'm like able to benefit in these ways, even if I'm harmed in this in similar ways by the same things, right? Like it's fucked up that I'm able to like you know benefit from imperialism or whatever by having access to a phone, right? And it's like, is that a benefit? Is it not? That starts to get into a messy thing, and it's like yes and no, right? Like it's it's like we have to accept the the multi-sided nature of it. And and when it comes to desire and navigating desire and like orienting around desire in a you know decolonial, anti-colonial, whatever way, it is really like being willing to constantly shift and move and like building up the ability to be honest with yourself and like think very critically about like why you like what you like is like the most basic way I can put it, right? It's like if I love, you know, video games, because I do, right? It's like it's kind of incumbent upon me to really think deeply about like stuff like the political economy of the video game industry, thinking about how much exploitation, before we even get into all the materiality of like the the machines that I'm using to play them or the machines that they use to make them, it's like the actual people making the games are being exploited very often, right? Like they have to, you know, they're not seeing their families for weeks at a time or whatever in a lot of these big games. Like I that's like to me, that's part of liking the thing, that's part of navigating my desire. Because it's like I like it's easier, quote unquote, I guess, not for me anymore, but like I could imagine if I was less informed, it'd be easier to be like, I don't know, I'm just ignorant, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I can't afford that if I again I'm operating in this like decolonial way, operating as someone who's trying to like change my conditions, change the conditions of the people around me, build communities or be a part of building communities that are more, if we have to use the term, like egalitarian, right? Like, so yeah, I really do think it's like you really have to interrogate that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:11

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I let me where were we? That was a big tangent. But I'm glad we did it. We were talking about co-ops and you know, the networking union co-ops. To get back to the internet bill side of things, it's been held off for a couple years, and who knows how long that lasts. As we've seen with Discord and Roblox, these companies won't wait, and oftentimes they just go ahead and do it, right? They'll apply the mandate from the most draconian legislation more widely and outside of the specific jurisdiction. So, Dip, I mean, what do we do about that?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:46

Yeah. I really think like orienting around some of the stuff we've been talking about is critical, right? So, like two relatively like flexible, but also kind of concrete things are like orienting around cooperatives, it doesn't have to literally just be worker cooperatives, it could just be like spaces that are run democratically and that also are oriented around like making things. Um so like if you're more of a union person, then so be it. Um but having those spaces and then having spaces where like people outside of the productive in that purely economic sense, not in a moral sense, uh productive sphere, like communally are able to relate to each other, deliberate, talk about the stuff they want to do and how to do it, right? And that'll just position uh like movements in ways that allow them to more easily respond to these things, right? Because again, it's like think about it as all these questions being at least partially rooted in questions of power. And so if your desires, right, the things you want aren't backed up by power, then it's you know, it's time to, you know what I'm saying, say goodbye, right? But like if you're able to be like, hey, we're not gonna let you do this specific thing because we'll be able to impose some uh sanctions, right? It doesn't have to literally be sanctions in the geopolitical sense, but you know, some type of sanction or some type of cost to implementing this beyond just like moral outrage or whatever, then that's when you start to get different dynamics at the random. So alongside that, there should definitely be campaigns that are run that like don't target the officials or directly, so like elect officials directly. Um, so like the people passing or sponsoring these bills, right? Uh, the committees that are kind of looking at these things, but like really orient around like targeting their material base of support, right? So think about like the organizations that benefit from these bills. It might be NGOs, might be PACs, might be social clubs, but like the most obvious example would be corporations, right? Um, and so that kind of implies or imagines like power mapping these bills, so figuring out what the actual like infrastructure of these organizations are and like how they relate to each other, like who's in both multiple, or you know, that kind of thing, right? Um, figuring out like how all these things are mapped from the power structural perspective. So seeing who's connected to those things and then like targeting them like through multiple organizing campaigns, right? Or you could do what uh the SHAC campaign did, which stands for Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty Campaign, it's like Anecus campaign from like the early 2000s. Um, you could do what they did and they targeted like similar thing to what I'm describing basically. Uh it's like secondary targets. So rather than attacking that company specifically, maybe they attacked like a subcontractor or like, you know, that kind of thing. The things that are propping up the specific thing you care about, right? And so that allows for like in that case, right? Uh those relationships are not that worthwhile to those subcontractors, right? Like the people who are pushing these things forward at the top are probably more invested than all the infrastructure that's propping them up, at least in a relative sense. So if you mess up the infrastructure, then you can bring the house down, right? So that's sometimes a better way than like, oh, this particular official signed on to this, or this particular official presented this, so I'm gonna attack them. So like that you can, but like it's worthwhile to come at that from like a strategic perspective after analyzing what's actually going on, rather than being like, this is the most obvious thing to do. So that's what we're going to do, right? Um, and so that analysis would inform the actions and that allows that action to be effective, targeted. And then, like, until you know, people have power, people power is a thing, and popular power is a thing, being able to influence power through these kinds of methods is something that's really useful. And so that would be combined with like care work, right? So the labor that allows people to do labor. So think of cooking, cleaning, clerical tasks, administration, that kind of stuff, right? Um, and then obviously more analysis and more action, and all those things kind of work together and like act as a kind of circular process where they feed back into each other, right? Like care analysis action begets more care analysis and action. And so that way, like a campaign can kind of not just be focused on specific short-term tactics, but long-term goals too, right? So, like it's kind of like that's a way to bridge all those things together, right? Is like starting by analyzing who's benefiting from these things and then figuring out like, okay, like how do we make these things stop as kind of the like baseline? And then how do we go beyond that into a situation to where that kind of thing can't happen again, right? And so, yeah, like I think it's important, and like we should not let these bills pass, right? Like, you should not pass, like, right? Like, it has to really be stopped. And so I'm not saying like, oh, we have to wait until we build up the power to like not even have to worry about it. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying these things should be approached in a way that allows us to go from here to there, right? Um, and we talked a lot about children, and they've really been used as like one of the main scapegoats in these bills and these kind of internet enclosing initiatives. Um, and that really needs to stop. And us, you know, I'm assuming everybody here is an adult. And so all of us should really be doing work as adults to, you know, build, inspire, empower spaces with kids that aren't predatory, giving them spaces where they can be children without having to worry about adults being, you know, harmful to them. And through that, kind of like maximizing their autonomy, which really, you know, includes things like giving kids the tools to understand what consent is, giving them tools to understand what power is, allowing them and helping them, encouraging critical thinking, making sure that they're healthy, right? And you know, thinking about this in the wider frame of the conversation we're having, which is really about popular power, um, there should really be like accountability in just a general sense, so that all of us, right, like every kind of person in these communities and these spaces and these societies, but especially people who are elected, you know, the people who wear this kind of veneer of public servitude, while in reality, you know, this means being this is me editorializing and me kind of sharing my opinion, but like in reality, these people are kind of parasitical to communities, to you know, spaces and stuff like that. If we kind of orient towards popular power, we do these things we've been talking about, that parasitical relationship will be less problematic, right? Like we'll have the power to kind of ward them off more and more, right? Um, and so this could really be something that holds us over while we start to figure out how to do something that works for us rather than against us, okay? And so this more radical take on accountability, I imagine, would be on one hand, really kind of informed by anti-carceral approaches and like practical concerns and practices that are meant to kind of, you know, disregard or shed some of the problems that come from an approach that's more liberal. And so an example of that is like quote-unquote rights, like this concept, I think, is both too rigid to really be helpful, and it's also too contextual, right? Like it's kind of the worst of both worlds where it can be really abused very easily, whether it's abuse in the usage of you know harming people who aren't or can't or don't follow things to the letter, or not being robust enough to resolve certain specific situations, right? Um, and so again, accountability would be like able to cultivate instead of rights, this idea of like obligation, which is just, you know, maybe sounds similar, but in my kind of conception, is really just like being able to acknowledge one's harm, being able to be responsible for the things that one does, and then taking emotional and practical steps to provide redress for those harms, along with like as, and this is something that counts for everyone, is like along with that, kind of having a commitment to playing a role in like undermining your personal ability or one's personal ability to cause harm, and then also the kind of undermining the whatever social structures are enabling that, right? Um, so that way it can kind of like on the community level be something that happens less and less and less. Okay. And then on the other hand, this kind of radical take on accountability I'm describing would be informed by the facts of that antagonism and parasitism mentioned earlier. So, you know, for the system itself, right? Like as in the government and all the things that we're talking about fighting, and not necessarily the kind of counter power that we're talking about, the anti-system or the network, whatever grassroots thing we're kind of describing. Um, so anyone who works in that mainstream hegemonic system, um, and that can be, you know, leaders of tech companies, that can be politicians, that can be the people who are stewarding and managing the bureaucracy of those systems, right? And I would say that those people kind of need to be related to in an oppositional way, right? And so essentially that would look like them being kind of marked or treated as like people who are valid targets for organizing against, right? And that can look like a bunch of different ways. That can look like what you probably imagine hearing that, and then that can also look like trying to figure out who can be turned into allies. Um, we've talked at length before about the you know boons and busts of that project, but that is something I think that's worth to keep in mind, and is something that can be strategically, tactically, operationally useful to have, right? And so to get into more about what that looks like. Specifically, that would be whether it's through money, whether it's through ethics, morals, however, you want to kind of think about the movement's building its own strategy. Um, those kind of like double agents or those people who are in the system who would work against it, um, would be essentially, you know, oriented towards undermining the system's capacity to do what it does, to cause the harm that it does, while bolstering, you know, we can call it the anti-system, right? Like we can call it that, bolstering those positions and aims, right? And so this could be as basic as like, you know, doing little things within their job, working slower, or, you know, like, you know, purposefully messing things up, or you know, causing rounding errors that gum up the works. It could be as simple as that, or it could be like much more extreme. It kind of just depends on the tactical necessity. It kind of depends on what that specific person is capable, willing, able to do, um, and what the moment and the movement needs in those moments, right? And you know, this is maybe a bit nebulous, or you know, it's hard to speak super, super, super concretely because again, like that gets into having us having to understand like where folks are at and like their specific moments and their specific things they need. But I think these are good things to think about, right? It's like, you know, not rejecting the ability or the capacity to interact with these forces that are harming us without getting subsumed by them, overtaken by them, or being confused about what that relation actually means, right? Like that's why I was emphasizing the fact that like these folks are antagonistic to us, these folks are parasitic to us as like people who aren't in these systems, right? People who don't benefit from these systems in any meaningful capacity. And so, like, that relationship should really be understood very clearly, and that can shape engagements, right? Um, and so yeah, I just think that like it really is useful when we can't be super specific to every situation to start thinking about what are the ways in which we can change how we're orienting in a general sense so that we can build things to you know play a role across movements and within our specific social change context, right? But I don't wanna I don't wanna just stay there in this kind of realm of the general and the maybe things that don't feel super concrete or like feel hard to maybe, you know, um take action on. And so we have to start somewhere. And I think that like working with people that you trust can be a really good first step. So figuring out who are the people that you think you can rely on, and then trying to figure out how to do projects with them. And I personally find, and I'm biased, you know, because I'm literally speaking to you as part of like a media project. So I'm biased in the kind of direction of seeing analysis and strategizing and sharing information is like important. But I do think that's like a good way for people to get started. Not to say that that's kind of like a training wheel situation because it's useful all the time, but just to say that like if you're literally like, I don't know where to start, I think that's useful, right? And so um one of the groups that I really think is cool is this group called Little Sis. It's kind of like a you know, the opposite of Big Brother, basically. Um, and they are like a research collective, like accountability initiative kind of vibe. And so they kind of have steps on how to start doing this analysis, doing this research, finding information in ways that can be useful to social change. And so basically, I'll just kind of walk through those steps to you know end this out. And so the first step is really finding people who are in your community. And that can be think of, I know community is kind of a hard thing to think about, especially in the wake of uh COVID-19, but just people who you can trust, people who you can share space with, whether that's geographic, whether that's digital, whatever that means for you, just like who are the actual individuals who you are able to spend time with. And then if you don't have an answer to that, um trying to think through what that can look like. And you know, that gets into maybe some territory that we can talk about more, but it's very possible. I'll just leave it there. Like it is very possible. So the first thing, like I said, finding people who you can work with. Second thing is having an idea of like how you can frequently come together. So concretely, like setting a meeting time, place, and format. Um, if it's in person, then it should be accessible in the kind of a disability sense, right? Multiple in multiple dimensions. Um, it should be people should be able to get to it through public transit, that kind of stuff. Um, it should be parent-friendly. So, you know, I don't know. You can probably imagine what that means, right? Kids should be able to kind of exist in the space because we definitely want, even if the people in your kind of community that you're imagining working with aren't kids, they probably have some relationship to kids, right? And if they don't, then we have some other questions we need to ask about who we kind of are in community with. Um, and then I think a big thing is, and this is a kind of it gets kind of dicey again, given the ongoing realities of the pandemic, but a very powerful thing in social gatherings is having food. And so if that can be swung, then that's really useful. And then I think alongside this is that you know, this community that you're building for these research projects that I'm kind of building up to describing will be probably small, right? It'll be like a handful of people, right? But I think it's also worthwhile to think about it in the context of there not just being y'all, but like a wider communal context, again, whether that's geographic, whether that's digital, whatever that ends up looking like. So having an idea of part of this formation of this small community or team or however you want to think about it, thinking about like what skills people have, what do they have access to as far as resources, what are they interested in, what do they care about, and how can all of those things be fed into building more expansive communal connections? Like thinking about all of that as part of this like initial gathering is really important. Because again, that will help also help shape like if you're trying to do a research project, like what you're kind of looking into, understanding about your context and your organizing. So once you've got that crew together, you can really start again figuring out like what is this project going to be? What is this campaign going to look like? And generally speaking, that are off those questions will often kind of start from a place of you know thinking about who's governing whatever we're looking at, right? Like who's in charge, right? Who's in charge and who does the work, right? And then there's who benefits, right? So like why is this happening? Who serves to gain something from you know these things, right? And then who pays for it, right? Like both in the sense of like who's footing the bill, right? And then who has to deal with the externalities or the the costs, right? Like, like, for example, if you're you know doing construction, right? It's like, okay, who has to deal with the this new thing being built in their neighborhood or whatever, right? So it's pay who pays in multiple senses, right? And then in a general sense, you want to also kind of trace, like you do the you ask those questions in order to get an idea of what the systems, whatever the localized piece of the system that you're looking at is, like what that power structure is shaped like, right? And generally, again, we're talking about you know, bad bills on the internet and like the enclosure of the internet. So that's kind of what our focus would be in this context is like, how do these people who are in power, how do these bills that are being passed, how do they relate to the power structure and why are they kind of organized in this way, right? And then alongside that, you can think about you know, who are the potential allies and adversaries within your communal context, right? So, like, are there people who would be for X, Y, and Z thing that you're doing research into? Are there people who would be against? And then if you could figure out why, then that's really helpful, right? Um, and you know, you can look at NGOs, you can look at community organizations, block clubs, advocacy groups, coalitions, businesses, all these things, right? And kind of see what they're talking about, and that will help you, you know, you don't have to necessarily start from scratch because a lot of people are already having these conversations if you start digging, right? And then kind of having all of this, right? Having your team, having a consistent way to come together, having an idea of how you're situated within your communal context, having an idea of other entities in your communal context that are relating to the power structure that you're trying to understand, like having all of that kind of play together will be what allows y'all to do research and what allows y'all to take action, right? And so you kind of imagine, okay, we have our process, we have our project, we're going forward, and then we do the research, right? And then, you know, the first step after you kind of finish the research is to like figure out, you know, um, how to share it, right? Like people need to kind of have awareness, right? All the data, whatever. And so a big part of that is like, okay, well, in my communal context, what would be the most effective modes to share that are within our capacity as a team, right? Is that a report? Is that a zine? Is that a series of uh, you know, Instagram reels or TikToks or something, right? Like, like thinking through all of those steps so that you can really kind of tune the information to your community, right? Um, and really kind of leaning into that and then sharing it, sharing it out, you know, sharing out the raw data, maybe depending on how it is and if it's legible and readable, whatever. Um, sharing out these more quote-unquote processed pieces, all that stuff, you know, is really important. Um, and that'll allow people to know what's going on. It can also really encourage people to take action because it gives them context as to why what they're seeing is happening, right? Like if someone just happened to sign on to, I don't know, again, we're using this internet bills thing, they sign on to Twitter and they're asked to put their ID in. It's like, that's like whoa, you know, like what's going on, right? Um, this hasn't happened yet, thankfully. But I'm just saying, like, as an example, right? And being able to say, like, okay, well, we have this resource in our communal context, right? And not only this is why this is happening in general, but this is why this is happening to us in our context, I think is a really powerful uh thing. And that again is able to give people like that that can be a catalyst for people to start being able to engage effectively in pushing back against those kind of undesirable activities that the system might foist on people, right? And that, you know, once people start getting engaged, they can continue to be engaged, right? Like having this research done will also, again, inform strategy in a way that is more rooted in what's actually happening versus kind of, you know, being based in just what people want to happen or what people want to do. It can be really rooted in again, like, okay, well, this is what we want to do, this is what we want to happen. But we also are doing that based on what's actually existing, right? And that can lead into further action, and that's how you get, you know, campaigns and movements and change happening, right? And so again, we're kind of bringing it back to the conversation, which is that you know, these bad internet bills are really problematic, and these enclosure with internet is really problematic for all of these different reasons, right? And there's a lot of you know, back and forth we could go with that. But I think that's kind of the core of what we're discussing, right? But I just want to make it very clear to you know, leave y'all with is that like the issue is not just, oh, you know, these bills are bad, because that would imply, oh, you know, like if we just get some different legislation on the docket, then we'll be good. And if you you know listen to enough of these episodes, you'll probably realize that that is not our perspective on things. I I want to leave y'all with the idea that like the system is doing what it's designed to do because that's all the like only way we really know what the design is, besides what people tell us, is like what actually happens, right? Like they can spend all this time talking about what's supposed to happen, and that is a very cold comfort in the face of like the the world as it currently is, right? And so obviously, the way that it's currently working, where again kids are being scapegoated and people are losing access to what meager freedoms they do have, like that's really detrimental, right? And so I think that something different needs to happen. We think that something different needs to happen, like as CNC. And generally speaking, right, if we had to kind of encapsulate what that would be, it would be anti systemic anti politics.