 Okay. Great. Let's start. Hi, everyone. I'm daily. I'm a staff technologist at the EFF and I'm going to be moderating today's panel conversation. So this is another installment of our at home with the EFF series that we kicked off last year during the beginning of the COVID pandemic. We did a pride month version last year, which is recorded on our Twitch channel. You can go watch it there and I'm happy to be doing it again this year. We're going to have about half an hour of conversation with our guests and then we'll have a Q&A portion later. So wherever you're watching from, please feel free to ask questions in the chat box as we go along and we'll gather them up and then we'll talk about them later. Speaking of our guests, it's an honor to be in conversation with Moses Moon, AKA Thought Scholar, Chelsea Manning, Haughty Damien, and Ian Coldwater. So great to see all of your faces. Great to see you too. So I'd like to give you all a chance to introduce yourselves to our virtual audiences right now, across the internet right now. Who you are, what you're up to, et cetera. Oh, I have to go first. Okay. I am currently writing a book and several other things. I just published, or I just was published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. I did the introduction for their symposium on sex work politics and a bunch of other things. Mostly, I should stop telling people this. I was told to stop saying this, but I'm mostly on Twitter. Twitter is my main platform. I didn't seek to really build a platform per se, but it just kind of happened and it just kind of snowballed at whatever. But mostly I write, I also draw. I used to sing. So these are, I'm an all-around artiste, but mostly I like creating, I guess, creating theory or critiquing or whatever. So that's basically what I do. I focus on sex work politics, bisexuality, transgenderism, and trans politics, queer politics, race politics, and sex and gender and all of that good stuff. Awesome. Happy to have you here. Chelsea, would you like to go next? Sure. I am a Twitch streamer, and I am producing a YouTube, I'm producing YouTube video series on science and technology, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence are the first two topics that I'm doing a series on. I'm XYChelsea87 on Twitch. I am XYChelsea on YouTube. And my Patreon is patreon.com. That is my main source of income. I do security consulting as well, but I am mostly transitioning towards doing more and more content production full-time. And I mostly talk about science and technology, security, things like that. Not known for anything else. That's it. Ian, would you like to go next? Sure. Hi, my name is Ian Coldwater. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am a software architect doing security for a company that does things. I also help run sick security for the Kubernetes project, which is a small open source project that nobody ever uses. I am Ian Coldwater on Twitter. And yeah, that's I think that's what I got to say. Kubernetes is a pretty small project. I think it's new, upcoming... Nobody's ever heard of it. A couple users, yeah. Great, thank you. Hadi, would you like to go next? Hope you're muted. Hi, so my name is Hadji Damian. I am based in Beirut. The initiative of being president of the right and current leader of president of the right was structured and built together with part of organizations in Beirut. Very excited to be here with you. Talking about digital services is very important. And let's get this started. Thank you so much. So as I mentioned, we're going to do like a bit of a moderated discussion for the first half hour or so and then we'll have a Q&A later. But kicking off with that, I think I might want to ask you all some questions, like just generally to the group first, to jump in as you wish if you feel so compelled. And then maybe we can go a little more pointed in a couple of you individually. But starting off at the EFF, the electronic frontier foundation, we're focused on protecting digital civil liberties, internet citizens, right? So I'm curious to hear what you all think about how the fight for protecting those rights impacts LGBTQIA plus people differently or how that conversation shifts a little bit from that perspective. Anyone can feel free to jump in. That's a broad question to the group. All right, sorry. I'm just going to go because nobody's answering anything. So I'm just going to go. All right, cool. So basically, the issue, I mean, whenever it comes to like queer and trans issues and electronics, I usually think of, I usually have to like range the, I mean, I do threat modeling, right? So you have to sort of threat model between the different levels of who a person is and what threats they're facing. So like a young queer or trans person who's just trying to figure out who they are, for instance, needs to protect, sometimes needs to protect their identities from their family. And so their threat group is like their family. And then you move up into like, there are people who are activists, like in countries where it's still illegal to be queer or trans. And they face a different threat model than there's like sex work that has a whole different threat model. So there's a sort of like the whole intersectionality of all of these different, you know, LGBTQ people in different spaces have different threats that they face. And one of the things that I usually focus on is like identifying which threats they face and what means to like, you know, what methods are practical and available, you know, that doesn't impact your daily life. Like you can't, I mean, you can't protect yourself from everything, but how do you protect yourself, you know, and still be able to live, you know, an improved life? So like, you know, what issue, it's a broad question because like, there's just so many different, there's so many different levels of risk involved. Yeah. And if I may step in here, you know, there is, it's a very first order, the one between a line word and the way from the keyboard. And you know, internet is quite impactful for our work. You know, it is crucial to connect, it's crucial to, it's for us to make out the way we wish to make out from it. You know, it makes it more accessible, so today we really have the excuse that it's happening to the knowledge that many people have created before us. For example, Jesse just spoke about being safe online and how we have to do it. So today, in spaces where we have been taking questions as people want, we won't really have anyone believe we can simply tap into what already has been happening and build on it. And this is precisely what we do. We develop our connections, especially with people who are still what you are going through. So when we combine the resources, we can generate a better impact when we really want to generate better impact and improve people's connections together. So yeah, these are my two cents here. And actually, to be even more practical, I can create, you know, last year, Internet enabled Internet provider Dikolo to organize the massive Women's Pride in June 2013 and now during the upcoming Work Pride in Copenhagen, Internet will enable us to broadcast films of material in sessions over the internet, over the worlds, so people we can now travel because of because of COVID restrictions and COVID effects can actively be spent. And even very bright internet has able us to connect with people who started their time flight. So with people who have worked on equalization functions, they can stimulate a different country. So it's quite a massive impact. You both touched on a couple of good spring points from there. Talking about how there is no one there's no one point of view when it comes to talking about such a broad community, especially internationally speaking, and also how it impacts our material realities. Speaking of which, I think it's really easy for people like activists and people that are advocating for rights online to miss those material impacts that policies and internet legislations or just the infrastructure that internet has on our communities in real life away from keyboard. And I'm curious how internet life or policy, regulation, infrastructure has impacted your work? And actually just to single you out, Moses, you've been a real thinker in this space I think before it was cool. The way you have talked about platform censorship and content moderation and how these things unequally enforced hit certain specific communities harder, hardest. Yeah, so I was just about to jump in but I have been talking a lot, I've been reading a lot about that's why I haven't really been on Twitter because I've been I've been just reading, I've been reading about surveillance and about like there's this lack of, I don't know if anybody follows like what's going on in academia or whatever but there's like a, there's a paper I'm reading it's called challenging the invisibility of sex work in digital labor politics. A lot of the time when we do talk when people do talk about digital labor they don't really mention sex work and when people talk about sex work I just I wrote about this in Peepshow magazine they and I was argued down on Twitter about this that there's this thread in sex work politics or you know in that arena on Twitter that anyone who works online is automatically privileged and I've kind of like dissected the language of privilege and how it's really not effective in describing some of our you know as some people would say you know intersections or you know whatever. I think about like I've been thinking about like cyber sex work and how the majority of the industry utilizes the internet in some way shape or form and yet we still have uneven access to the internet like you know like in my area I live on the south side of Chicago and our internet like is sometimes like not as good or it's out or you know different things like that and whatever it's because of the area that I live in because it's the area that I live in is majority black and this happens in other in indigenous areas and everything like that and it happens in urban spaces and in actuality like a lot of time when we focus on like the digital divide we focus on like urban versus rural when if you look at it all broadly like altogether um poor white people who live in rare rare rural I hate this word rural and urban areas actually have greater access to internet than their counterparts of you know non-white counterparts and so I don't think a lot of people know that and the digital divide conversation kind of obscures that and when we talk about digital labor politics we don't talk about sex work because the picture of a sex worker in trouble or you know survival sex worker is like a homeless youth like homeless youth or like it's like you know the the the drug user prostitute it's not it's not like you know like the people like and then the thing is is that like online is like almost synonymous with like escorting which is like a different like a higher end prostitution so or like you know like only fans and things like that but there's like a lot of what we would you know what some people would term lower end or lower class sex workers who are utilizing the internet because it's just like a ubiquitous part of our life like water and electricity and all these other utilities and this is why I think that we should take control or like the like the public should have control over internet access we should all have internet access it should be a utility because we have to use it to fill our job applications we have to use it to make appointments we have to use it to do all of these vital things so why should we have to pay upwards of like 80 to 100 to you know more or more to have access to the internet I don't know if i'm answering your question but that's where it took me you're answering that question and a few others like that like you touched on there are a few things in there like um especially like the that uh higher rp of like privileges that kind of stack up with our access to the internet or within like sex work right like locally in the community we call this the hierarchy um about like how this the stacks of privilege like hit different people and you've done such amazing work in like talking about how access to internet or um access to platforms on internet or like the different types of access hits different levels of like the hierarchy in different ways um which is such like an untapped part of the conversation and because as you pointed out like sex workers built the internet yeah I I just want to jump it real fast and just like point out that like you know one of the things that I've encountered between the the discussion between online sex work and street sex work right is the fact that street sex work usually ends up using bitcoin or venmo or some kind of cashless you know method to do payment as opposed to like like like paper cash so like and that they're like so like that goes with the the same sort of thing is that even though they may not have internet access they're still you the most people are still using these um these services that are still available on on on a smartphone and if we're talking about the fight for internet freedom and the connections to sex work and to lgbtq ia plus folks anyway a lot of the time things internet policies that come down on on queer folks i'm just going to say as large umbrella term start out as anti-sex work policies and so it's important for us to be fighting for the digital rights of sex workers because that will eventually end up coming down on the rest of us that's a really good point it's uh it's difficult to it makes it like sometimes i think more difficult to like narrow the scope of what we're advocating for when we when we have to realize that it's a vastly intersectional network of issues right yeah well i mean it's not it's not hypothetical like you know you see like apple removed uh in the process of removing grinder you know for from the app store i mean there's a statement saying that it's not going to hit grinder but the the sentiment behind it right but they're using that they're using their leverage they're using the threat you know essentially to basically forest grinder to crack down on on on on people and they're you know like it's just it's a disproportionate amount of power exactly and that actually is a perfect lead in thank you you know that's a question i wanted to ask which is it talking about these these sort of big companies that we have that uh support uh so-called support for like pride movements or like uh queer l2d qi plus friendly movements especially in the u s specific but then often fail out like fail to roll out products like the um the rainbow like feature uh to users in certain countries or areas under the guise of like protecting these people's safety because of where they live in the world um how how do you feel about this like what kind of nerve is it hitting is this a paternalistic move or is it protective or we're honestly to be very friendly i really want to hear you back at your computer because this is a very accurate conversation we're having in private private circuits in general so yeah so i'm very excited to do what you what you what you think it's hard to hear you i'm sorry it is a little can you hear me better now yes you're saying that this is a conversation that keeps on coming from private circuits and into private other places and i would not be here but this will take this matter and then i would share things with you you know what is the point of many private organizations i think oh go ahead please oh i would say i would say i think um for me i think a lot of these issues tend to converge at a certain point um like it's not just paternalism but it's specifically or i guess for me like um and we could talk globally too but i'm just going to talk about america just so i don't get to you know whatever um but in the you know it's in the in the americas you know we're specifically living under sort of like in um you know like white supremacy or like an end blockercy is what i'm calling it and basically basically it all comes back to sex gender and race all of these issues to control people's movement to control people's body to control people who are not fully considered people but are considered property in you know the greater sense of the term or the literal sense of the term depending on you know your perspective and so i think that a lot of this crackdown it doesn't just have to do with sex work it has to do with maintaining the end blockercy and so and the and the material things that you know in the power that you know they that these you know larger forces hold and so all of these things come back to you know control of the population control of the citizens and everything like that so you know they create these laws and you like you'll see these conversations about over population you'll see it a lot in that and all of these things touch on reproductive justice because when you hear about over a population when they talk about it what they meet what they really mean and then you can see is that there are too many non-white people and not the right white quote-unquote people who are having children you know what i'm saying like like they um you know because so many other groups when they come to America were subsumed into you know the category of white that's why i like quoted it because like there's a lot of people who would come to America be considered white who aren't considered white in other places and they're also like some of them are also part of populations where it's like we don't really want you having kids it's like a you know genocide type of you know you it's like a type of eugenics you know so when we hear about overpopulation we hear that you know you're not having enough you know we're not having enough kids and you we're not having enough you know we're not reproducing enough and when when 2050 comes there's gonna be so many elderly people overtaking youth and everything like that but in reality the weed it's just such a very loose such a very loose we right because like the majority of people in America who are not having a lot of children are not are are are white and so the worry and and you know like the thing that's happening concurrently too is like this control over white women's bodies because they want especially cisgender white women specifically because they want white women to have children so there's like this push and pull of like we want more children and at the same time oh but we're overpopulated you know and like this like it's kind of like constant circle it is like it is like a massive overstep right to be uh for these like companies like like like facebook or or like apple as Chelsea mentioned earlier to take it upon themselves to be like the arbiters of what is morally acceptable right like they're not that's not their position they're they're uh software companies this happens with the state too because like you know with law enforcement because like i i had some neighbors across the street and they were like i was sitting outside and they started like screaming arguing wherever and i guess she hit him and then he pushed her and then she was like i'm gonna call the police on you it was a it was a black couple and i was i went to see if they were all right and the guy downstairs was like oh yeah they fight like that all the time just call the police and i was like what no i'm not doing that just like i just wanted to see if they were all right and he was like well you know like the police could take care of because they have guns and i was like what are guns supposed like they're not so like what do guns have to do with this is clearly a social workers issue like but we have the police and the state kind of like we've substituted like therapy and and and like i said it's a loose weed like there's a substitute substitution you know therapy and social workers and what they're actually supposed to be doing like arbiters on bunch of people and instead you just call the police and the police they're supposed to handle like domestic disputes and all of these other little things and it's gotten more and more they've encroached more and more into the home and like these different territories and it's it's it's a control tactic and it does like almost seem like they're some of these same steps are like running in parallel from like i'm like apple or facebook or google or whatever visa mastercard internet infrastructural services that are picking up on themselves to do the same sports of controlling measures confusing well well they're doing a lot of that you know under pressure because they know they want to self-regulate before congress steps in because congress is constantly threatening i mean the federal congress in the u.s. like basically setting the pace the agenda here actually i would like to speak to something that was brewed up about social media and platform censoring and you know about their job whether it is their job to do this and so you know it's quite a delicate thing because partly it's a private company so it's like when you're going to restaurant you know if you don't like it you leave and it's uncomfortable but at the same time when you aren't this huge company that is so instrumental and that is beyond a company that has literally been somehow shaping people's lives and interaction then it is a different story it's a different discourse and well you know um there is inevitably more radicalism more radicalization there is more extremism and they should be inherently framed um and you know when we read the story when we go back to see what has been happening before we understand that um what we live is really not new and exceptional of course these are new expressions but the core is still the same um and the problem with people who want to use a specific compass to say that I'm more more than you and I know how people must behave and what should happen I personally believe that this is a very dangerous thing because all totalitarian systems and regimes they use this discourse in the beginning we know better we're working for the best of people and whatever your progress and so on and we need to acknowledge that when people pull in a certain direction and add more tension the other party is going to respond the same way and when it comes to free speech free speech forces us to use our uh you know to use our brain like in the name of free speech we cannot literally say everything but it would be really very to be very responsible because with all our freedoms comes a great deal of responsibility however we can never police or criminalize rights the moment we do so even for a good cause we establish a precedent a very dangerous precedent that will be used later on against those people that these policies initially so to to protect so yes it's a great structure but many people from social media or like uh Chelsea mentioned earlier for example having Reinder and Apple reframing a conversation or specific behavior around sex work or escorting and so on like let's be clear there are plenty of ways to get around things but banning people from social media for example is definitely like a solution and I also believe that it's better that hate speech happens publicly so we can better monitor it rather than cancel it because when we do so the hate speech will continue but you will lose track of it because it will take place in in zones and spaces that are less visible and less accessible to us so we are only creating further polarization uh which leads to very uh lethal problems I'm not sure I agree to be honest um I think that we have seen that deep platforming works um in the last several years I think you can look at Mr. Milo to see an example of times when deep platforming has actually been quite effective in getting hate speech and open Nazism and that kind of organizing if you drive it to less visible places then it actually can make it materially more difficult in a couple of different ways for them to organize and I'm not sure I think that's entirely bad I think you're right it's a hard line to walk um because we've seen that you know well intentioned policies can end up coming down on people who they were not originally intended to come down on but I also think that like letting fascists organize in the open we've seen emboldens them helps them do more stuff and recruit more people putting them into places where they're going to have a hard time talking to people who are not each other we've seen works and so it is a hard line yeah and I think I think the question come it really comes down to who does the like like where does that deep platform and come from does it come from the state does it come from corporations does it come from relationships and or does it come from just sort of like outcry and like you know like protest and things like that so I think I do that's like uh I think that's that's definitely um that's definitely a debate that has been going on in western europe and the united states in particular lately and I don't I don't think I don't think it's landed quite yet but uh I I tend to agree with uh with Ian on on on that part um but uh yeah you know uh if you will give the corporations or the government you know this this deep platforming power it may end up you know backfiring on you know uh the queer and trans community yeah unrestricted power that is sure sure so like you know we we chat amongst ourselves we have debates with ourselves about what is what is the best place so like where should this deep platforming take place at what level of freedom of speech should be given to digital citizens right but that's not how the companies roll it out right so like Mark Zuckerberg takes it upon himself to make the decisions for us um if you uh if you had a piece of advice for mr. Zuckerberg uh about how to approach these issues what would it be this is supposed to be a serious answer and not like question put your job in flight of mars or something that is completely yeah I was I was completely I that that was my hesitation too same hesitation um did did we lose moses uh I think they have to step off for a second to okay uh the young one in the back okay okay it happens it happens yeah there there are people around us my cat is trying to break into the room as we speak but yeah it's it's yeah it's hard because you know uh at the end of the day you know depending on depending on CEOs to address these things is it's just it's just a terrible model you know you're basically depending on the whim of of an unelected un unaccountable billionaire to make these decisions and when they make these decisions they're unquestioned and and and far-reaching so you know uh you know if I mean my you know I my my opinion is the same as as Ian's here which is like you know uh having giving them that power and to begin with just just giving somebody like Mark Zuckerberg that amount of power is just they shouldn't have that power to begin with that amount of power it should be a more more diverse more distributed uh you know uh debate and discourse in my opinion so there shouldn't be billionaires sorry I don't know I'm just taking all I'm just taking all your comments in and stuff like that because I um I don't I don't have like full thoughts on this yet but I will say that there's like this invisible line drawn between quote-unquote like fascists and like other entities other groups and everything like that and I don't think that that line is a hard line so I think I I liked what Chelsea said about it depends on who's making the policies and who is doing the deplatforming because honestly like it's hard to like for me it's hard to kind of like think of these things as separate like a lot of people they you know like if they're in politics you know they're staunch democrat or they're republicans and whatever and then you have like this oh you know like hold on one second this is this is a this is a a centrist a centrist and things like that and and whatever don't don't don't do that I mean I think you're selling yourself a little bit you there's this amazing uh if people aren't familiar there's this amazing piece that um Moses wrote a few years ago I think for african about like platform censorship and how it hit sex workers black and brown sex workers specifically and how these things trickle and roll out to like broader beyond that and how those effects aren't thought of before they're rolled out and that's I mean that is where I think the conversation needs to be right like that's what needs to be before the decisions are made yeah yeah I think more of us more marginalized groups need to be involved in the policymaking also don't agree with the practice of lobbying and like basically paying for the laws that you want and so like I don't know like I don't I don't have I don't have I guess like right now I don't have full complete thoughts but I will say that I think that there's this there's this um dichotomy or dichotomous line drawn between like white supremacists and then like everybody else and it's just really not that simple because there have been a lot of policies that have been made that have harmed um my community which is the the broader black community which includes a lot of queer and trans people especially like if we're talking about the lgbtq community specifically um there was a lot of back and forth and debate over marriage equality being the centerpiece of the movement and who that would benefit and it turns out that the people who were dissenting were correct and that it allowed white gay men to assimilate in a certain kind of way and to gain political power and to become white gay republicans in some cases and everyone else was just kind of left in you know this in between space where some of sometimes they can benefit and a lot of the time they cannot yeah i also i also think that corporations when given this when given this kind of power they have a tendency of of creating a sort of like an arbitrary balance where they're like oh okay like you know whenever and there's a specific example that i have which is whenever the whenever facebook cracked down on militia groups right which um a number of people were calling for right wing militia groups after once after the one six attacks to be taken down um and a number of people who uh advocated for self defense for trans people in the cities in particular were also taken down and that so it was it was like a both side sort of balance like oh okay like we if we have to take down right wing you know groups that that advocate for you know self-defense uh you know uh using using firearms or other means then we also on the other hand we also have to you know take down trans people who simply are providing information about pepper spray not even like firearms so we saw that happen like in and you know it was a small number it was maybe maybe a maybe a 300 to 30 ratio you know it was like a 30 to three ratio which i guess is 10 10 to one ratio in my head that's my math in my head um but you know you know these these sort of consequences seem to happen a lot whenever comes from corporate from the corporations because there's there's a sort of balance that the an arbitrary balance that they that they generate in their minds and in their policy decisions and i think we lost haughty for he's been censored uh but i think he's coming back shortly but i think he has a good time for us to segue uh over to our q and a we've been collecting some questions on periscope twitch facebook etc and i've got a few gathered here that i'll um pick and and and throw at y'all and please feel free to answer if you uh feel so compelled we've got one from sam park on periscope uh that asks would legislation be preferable to corporate policy on content moderation slash user protection it's not going to happen i just they have their lobby the corporate lobbyists are too powerful and they have too much money to throw in at it so you know the question is would legislation be better um it may it may be it may be a better process in terms of like you have public discourse you have a record um but in terms of like the the lobbying the the sheer lobbying force i i don't think that legislation in this area will will happen i don't i just don't think it's a realistic um i don't think it's a realistic goal so i think that i think that what how that's what's happened that what's happening here um is that policies are being generated by corporations because it because of broad movements to undercut you know their their you know to to undercut their image or you know uh outcry or brand you know harm to their brand from from boycotts and protests and whatnot um and i still think that you know i mean there's no good answers here it's all unfortunately yeah that's how it works right um well okay let's move on to a different one we've got one from uh u o three nine b on twitch that's first starts with hi from france um i have a question do you think that the free software community has to create slash invent new licenses great question here um new licenses including restrictions on the usages of the software to prevent things like free software being used by oppressive groups or companies this is an ongoing debate in the open source community right now um there are measures that are being taken toward this um if you look up ethical source um i believe there are people working on that um i have some logistical questions about it personally um but i think that that is a thing that people are thinking about that some folks are working on and that is not at all settled so if there are thoughts that you have on that um open sources open source come get involved come contribute and help us figure it out yeah i think i i think i've actually had conversations with even with ian about this in particular which is you know the um the sort of like adding something to the adding some form of like licensing that is that is more than copy left you know it's it's not just that you can't share it's not just that you can it's such as a restriction on not being able to share information anymore but being able to put into code licensing restrictions on on on hard on using it for actively harmful things and how do you and and i think the biggest the biggest problem with that debate is that if somebody takes the code and puts it into proprietary software at what you know when when will you ever know that you know that that this code is being used in this harmful manner and i think that that's that that's sort of a limitation of having of having a licensing thing however it does come to light then there is the possibility of you know civil action or forcing them to to close down or whatnot so you know i it's an open debate and i and i think that there's a lot of issues with that um that are unresolved you also have the question of what constitutes harm which is not necessarily something that there's consensus on now great points yeah i wish there were an easy answer to that we're having similar conversations over in open projects here at yep hey welcome back hey sorry you're having some difficulties welcome back um so sorry i was um kicked out by firefox firefox is censoring you and i'm i'm so sorry that's happening someone like them was as usual so nice um okay i'm kind of skipping around in like the q and a section here we've got another one here from ruby red zanadu on twitch it's a fabulous name uh what's the most important lesson for us to pass on to the next generation of queer people getting involved in the digital realm that's a question wow this could go any number of directions go ahead i'm sorry um listen it's a very it's something exceptional is happening actually in the middle east and north africa region we're very young uh queer people using social media the internet actually to express themselves in social media through visuals through posts through any other expression and it's because it's creating their own uh visibility and therefore it's creating um the proper perception of what it means to be queer queer people ourselves and uh this is a fascinating thing this new generation it's a new wave of reactivism is online for sure and with this again comes the responsibility of how to navigate the internet how to navigate digital security and this is the most important thing that we need to uh to pass on to our next generation um how to be safe online how to how to how to engage with this trolling because let's face it in gbtx because people we're much more subjected to attacks on trolling than others um our safety and privacy lines are course which creates liabilities um and by protecting our digital civil liberties we can only ensure that the online streets where we exist uh we are free and you know and people are accountable in it um so yeah i'm actually going to be a sort of cranky old man for a minute and say that i think it's actually really important to teach young people who are just getting involved in the digital realms that offline is also important and that it's important to be able to know how to organize in real life if they don't have the internet platforms that they're used to it's important to know how to connect with one another in real life for any number of reasons it's important to remember that there is a world outside of the internet sometimes because i think it can be really easy to live in these bubbles and like if these things get taken away from us because if going back a bit and calling back to talking about corporate content policies if these platforms get taken away where do we go from there i think it's important for young folks to have an answer for that because those of us who are a little older can remember a time without the internet but young folks who are growing up with it don't because they can't and so knowing how to navigate without that i think is actually an important thing for them to know that's a great point for for new people that enter into particularly the security and the digital realm space like in terms of jobs my my advice would be to be aware of the fact that historically queer and trans people in these spaces have been disposable and that you know the i i think that there is a that there is a very real churn of queer and trans people who end up in in these large corporate you know in these large corporations who whenever whenever the corporations like google or microsoft have some difficulty or have some problems internally like the then the it is the first people who seem to end up getting laid off or end up getting into trouble with you know where other people would normally get a pass tend to be minority groups and that and then that's across the board that's not just queer and trans that's that's immigrants that's you know i mean that that's people of color you know people who have different backgrounds and being white and male have a tendency of being first up on the chopping block and so protect yourself from that you know and figure out like ways of organizing in your space that are not dependent upon hr you know unionizing um knowing your rights etc whenever comes to working in these spaces so because i i think there's a value in having people in these spaces but also that value comes with an enormous amount of risk i think i think that when we talk about like the digital space versus like away from the keyboard i think we have to be careful not to reinforce like that kind of like binary between the two things or like you know i guess like the digital dualism or whatever and i think that i do think too that a lot of the assumptions that youth are not aware of the world outside of the internet or that they need extra lessons and everything like that is very class specific and sometimes race specific because i having watched the news my entire life you know like i'm i'm hyper aware as a black person as a black queer person like of the world around me and the way that the the dangers of like revealing too much or something new on the internet i know so many people in my community who worry about their kids being on the internet who take precautions who are like don't get on there and say this and that and don't put pictures of this and that or don't put pictures of their kids at all and so i think that we have to like i think that in order to get to the root of a lot of these issues we have to like question some of our assumptions and about youth and about like what they know and and don't know i know that when i was a kid it was assumed that you know like i didn't think about certain things regarding safety or whatever and it is true that youth are less experienced and when you're less experienced you're more likely to take risks however there are a lot of youth who are immigrants who are black who are queer and trans and have been homeless who are very much aware of the outside world and have had to organize on a on a micro level on their own who have you know like there's a lot of like especially with like trans women trans girls in particular being out on you know if they're put out of their home and whatever they have to figure out how to create their own structured family and clothing and chosen you know love ones in order to survive if they're you know if you're street based somewhere because there's a lot of shelters that will not take them there's a lot of um shelters that do not there there's not a lot of shelters available to to um youth males there's not a lot of shelter they're available to trans people um there's not there's just not a lot of resources available and so they've had to organize and they've had to do those things a lot of black people and latinos or latinas you know they grow up in the church and they learn how to organize there that's where I learned how to organize a lot of different things events protests all of that because it runs through that because we've always had to and so our youth are hyper aware and I don't think that in you know non-white communities especially in queer community queer and trans communities especially that whereas that those youth are as distant from their ancestors and from their elders as other groups might be because we have always had to reach back in order to survive and we have always had to think of time not in a linear way but in a circular way because history is always repeating itself and really when it comes down to it when we think about who's first on the chopping block it's going to be black and immigrant queer and trans people to be black people across the board and statistically that that shows yeah yeah you made a such a great point there about like um how like we can't draw like rigid boundaries right between the between afk and online right yeah I I've encountered this like personally where I've had older people you know not not even that just that that much older like tell me like to go go and touch grass because I'm online and I'm like literally and I'm and they say this while I'm in the park laying in the grass like you know there is there like your talk like the communication boundaries like the the reality I mean we we we live in people who are it can be extremely online and still be very cognizant and aware of the entire world and have a life off off the internet so I think that that is a that is a that is a stereotype there's a generational stereotype that's being that is being like conveyed through mass media that I think is is I think damaging and harmful I want to apologize because I think that I was trying to make a more nuanced point that I think failed to come across and genuine apologies for that because I didn't mean to stereotype you in that way no I didn't pick that up I didn't pick that up at all I feel like all together these all the points that you all have brought up through this is just about like how these that there isn't like a rigid distinction between the online are off and how the two inform each other and the more aware that we are of it the more powerful we can be in our organizing and advocacy for ourselves and for each other there's another question that came up in the in the chat it could be a good one to maybe start wrapping up with before you say some goodbyes and you know plug our things could be a trolling question it's worth talking about um uh someone asked why is it only I think the stream here why is it only focused on lgbtq plus plus plus doesn't everyone's freedom matter yes everyone's freedom matters and precisely this is why we are talking about lgbtq because lgbtq's freedom matter lgbtq's freedom matter no no it doesn't matter their freedom doesn't matter it's also pride month but it's the pride panel so I think that's why we're talking about the gays today I think that this is a funny question because and I um it's total shade complete and utter to the person who wrote this question just because like this is the the title of the panel and what it is but also because I've been writing this piece on the politics of victimhood and how we're like with specifically I've been focusing on the black community in the gender wars that continuously happen and this idea that it's almost like a relationship where it's like well you did this and you did this and sometimes what one person did is worse than what the other person did right you know but like sometimes we all have our parts to play and sometimes we just need to hear each other out and sometimes you know what I'm saying so it's very complicated right and to ask you know a question like doesn't everyone's freedom matter it's a very tricky question right because you know some people want the freedom to murder people like some people want the freedom to drop bombs on other people's countries some people want the freedom to enslave people some people want the freedom to tell people what they can and cannot do outside of work so it depends on what you mean by freedom what do you you know like what is liberation to you because you know liberation to me might not look the same or liberation of certain groups might not look the same exactly yeah and if we don't hone in on the specific things on it like how are we going to get anywhere um whether or not that that question was in good faith or not i'm i'm happy to bring it here and thank you all for doing it at george flight square we have four stated assumptions that get started stated at the beginning of every meeting and i'm not going to speak to all four but i will say that one of them is assume that not everybody here has your idea of liberation in mind which i think is an incredibly useful ground rule because it accounts both for people having differing ideas and for people who are there for various kind of perhaps untoward purposes and the idea is assume that act accordingly so if we all assume that we don't all have the same idea of liberation in mind we can all learn about each other's idea of liberation and what makes sense and what doesn't and also we can act accordingly so it covers both threat models and learning about each other my idea of liberation is that i i should not i shouldn't have to wear a mask when i go to the definitely not the same idea of liberation most important issue i'm kidding um well we only have a few minutes left before i'm gonna cut you all off and say goodbye uh but i would like to give you all an opportunity well first let me say thank you all for joining us here thank you all everyone out there watching uh for tuning in to this e f f at home uh conversation and thank you moses chelsea hadi ian you're all so wonderful it's so lovely to see you all gathered here in this uh this square um is there anything that you would like to uh plug or where we can find you online um you can find me um that scholar on twitter that's basically the only place i am excellent twitter account you can find me uh at ian coldwater on twitter um for plugging things i want to say if you're not paying attention to what's happening in minneapolis minnesota in the usa right now there's a lot going on with um ongoing responses to police killings not limited to george floyd um there uh was there have been multiple people killed by the police and somebody killed by a white supremacist just in the last couple of weeks so um please pay attention to what's going on there it's really important because that kind of thing is a canary that might eventually come to affect you too thank you chelsea anything you want to plug all right all right yes so uh i i know that we've had that we've done a lot of serious topics uh i i do a lot of not serious things uh for me i i have a twitter account xy chelsea i have a twitch account uh where i stream video games uh mostly educational and um i i i try to have some kind of educational element to it i don't necessarily talk about politics that is uh twitch.tv forward slash xy chelsea ab7 i am also uh i'm also starting a youtube series on uh on on science and technology and particularly focusing on tech issues um like just educational stuff like build my the science guy in particular i'm focusing my first two videos on uh cryptocurrency and i'm already starting work on my second video which is on uh artificial intelligence that's great i can't wait to see them yeah um hotty and uh oh and i'm on p and i'm on patreon so patreon.com forward slash xy chelsea that's my main source of income right now nice oh yeah i'm sorry i'm on patreon too it's just slash that scholar i totally always forget about my picture thank you for letting us know yeah if anyone out there is watching and appreciating the work and the words you heard today please go there and uh play our fine folks hit them um looks like hotty dropped off again he's being censored by mozilla org um but i guess maybe plug a little bit for him i know you can find him on twitter hotty damien um great twitter account he's oh he's actually back hotty i was just about to plug for you but if there's anything you'd like to say before we go you can find the place well what's happening today is a sign that digital uh knowledge know how and security and everything is instrumental actually because literally i've been kicked in out like more than four times it's just uh too weird to embarrassing so uh thank you for for for coping with me on this thing um so i'm also on twitter um haji damien this is um i'm i'm i'm not so much into social media but i'm essentially on on twitter when it comes to this um so thanks for for having me um you know the borders between the offline and the online are very course that happens online happens offline what happens offline is also online we can mobilize entire people at masses just by having some things going online so it's quite the big responsibility and this is a new ecosystem that we need to properly um understand so we can navigate it especially in our work to improve people's uh you know realities whatever uh whoever they are so thanks thank you that's a that's a perfect note to end it on so please follow everyone here go to eikf.org you can learn more about us and also you can donate to the organization there thank you all so much happy five one awesome