Ask HN: How can a programmer help with current events? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can a programmer help with current events?

37 points_hplx40 comments

I'll preface with: I'm not interested in supporting violence or doing anything illegal. No hacking, for example.

With that established I'm looking for ways I can use my skillset to help people protest effectively and avoid danger. Examples of the kind of thing I'm talking about:

- During the Hong Kong protests there was an app that helped people avoid known police outposts

- Combatting disinformation and/or processing data, about police abuse for example

- Helping people (peacefully) coordinate and make things less chaotic

- Mobile panic button?

- Mindfulness/mental health assistance for people trying to cope

Anyone have ideas/specific needs or initiatives they know about? I saw a data initiative the other day but some commenters made it sound like it shouldn't be trusted.

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The problem is these protest are not effective, period.

All this is ultimately doing is making racist people more racist.

I am a white guy and my girl is black. You know how much we talk about race? None, zero, never. It only ever comes up when racist people point out we are not of the same race. Our values, taste and upbringings are literally the same. If you think black people can't be racist try dating a black woman as a white guy, lol.

The way to get past racism is not to be a racist and divide people on the basis of race. That is it.

What is happening right now is going in the wrong direction.

You would have a hard time helping the cause of racist assholes more than these protest.

For what it's worth I personally do think that the focus on race is missing the bigger point, which is police brutality and impunity. They've been beating up white people too.

I think about the shooting of Daniel Shaver very often. A cold-blooded execution of a middle class white man caught on video and the officer was acquitted. We need to address both police brutality as well as racial inequality, and I wonder if it's more difficult to do both at the same time.

> We need to address both police brutality

There's a bigger legal+cultural problem if people are cold-blooded executed by police and the officer is tried and acquitted. The investigators, prosecutor, and jury are complicit.

Protest is an effective means of political participation. I mean that literally, not ideologically. Protest gives society a channel for communicating political grievance. It leads to organized political activism. It gets people elected and others kicked out of office. It also communicates to people in power, often isolated from the concerns of the grassroots, what the grassroots cares about. Don't underestimate this last bit. In countries where there is no right to protest and no free media, the elite in power literally have no clue what problems ordinary people are facing. Total "let them eat cake" situations.

> I am a white guy and my girl is black. You know how much we talk about race? None, zero, never.

This comment reminds me of this comment https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/sport/denver-broncos-coach-ra...

> The problem is these protest are not effective, period.

I struggle with this one because I think it's true.

> The way to get past racism is not to be a racist and divide people on the basis of race. That is it.

> What is happening right now is going in the wrong direction.

You seem to think the protests are primarily about race. I don't. I frame this as only police reform.

One big thing that I think people can do is start saving police footage. It's pretty easy to do but can be especially helpful. Even just seeding a torrent of that is a way to passively help, I think.

I was also wondering about this question, so I hope that people might have some good ideas.

One that I haven't thought my way through completely (as it's not my domain whatsoever) is a generic way to round up online sales totals. Maybe a browser extension that lets users round up what they're set to spend to the nearest dollar, and donate what's rounded to a relevant charity or fund? Charities could maybe partner with the developers of that open source app (or write their own extensions) to plug into it, and it would allow for people shopping online to choose where the money goes. As we've moved to online shopping being asked at the counter to round up for (possibly out of date/favor) charities has left a lot of people's lives, so an open source team that works to put that on major sites as an extension could be very beneficial. The ability to add charities with software and without waiting on large corporate partnerships could really benefit this system.

I figured it'd use PayPal for the actual payment maybe. There might be serious holes in that, but it's something that came to my mind earlier today.

I think ideas that could incorporate protesting while being mindful of coronavirus could also be interesting.

So basically Acorns, but the money goes to charity instead of your own investments

I guess, I hadn't heard of Acorns before. Thanks for the tip.

If there was an app that can be used to identify the DA, mayor, chief of police, congressman and senator(state and federal) of a police abuse of power incident and pester them with complaints, that would be useful.

Or help people vote by sending them alerts for their area to vote out politicians that took no or little action when such an event occured.

A harder challenge would be to counter-monitor police including stingrays and aerial attacks. Both offensive and defensive tools would be useful.

Don't build, operate, or maintain the infrastructure of the surveillance state. That's a big one.

For what it's worth, here is a story from WW2.

A B-17 came back from a run over Germany with a dud shell lodged in its fuel tank. When the intelligence units opened the shell, they found it completely empty apart from a note written in Czech saying, "this is all we can do for you, for now."

At least, that's we can do. Most of us in HN are blessed with brain, not muscle. We should not help governments or entities who oppress the weak ones, discriminate the minorities, bully one another. However, we should not help the rioters, incite futher hate, provoke the society, destroy small business, etc.

I read news, however I do not forward any of photos, videos from those media to my friends and family members. I wish there's a modern day Gandhi or MLK who promote peace and forgiveness. All of us should be kind to another. We should not help any side to start a civil war, government instability, etc.

> Don't build, operate, or maintain the infrastructure of the surveillance state

I don't suppose the open source library you choose has any hope of rejection by some government lawyer? I've heard the federal government has the ability to ignore contract law when it plays the national security card, but I haven't verified this assertion.

You are going to do what you are going to do, but you might try looking up The Shirky Principle first (organizations tend to keep alive the problem they are designed to combat).

Years ago, I used to say on some email list I was on that "fighting against the fighting is still fighting."

People don't really want to be protesting. What they want is justice and they don't know how to get it.

If you really want solutions, look for things that already exist that genuinely help promote justice and better treatment for disempowered peoples or build something which does so.

/2 cents

It's money. Give money.

We as developers and engineers have a lot of extra spare cash around. Donate to mutual aid funds or bail funds.

That's fair. I'm biased to look for an interesting problem to solve but you're probably right that, realistically, money is where I can have the greatest impact.

I want to bail out peaceful protestors but not looters. Is there an organization that is doing some vetting?

Police aren't really distinguishing between the two. Besides, even looters don't deserve to stay in jail if they can't afford bail - they'll still see their day in court.

Most of the 2020 presidential candidates have posted links. I know for sure Bernie has. If you can trust their team, then that seems like a safe bet.

Build websites, databases, and automation for charities and community organizations.

* Find what community organizations and support groups exist in your local area. Your local police department and food banks can help point you to some. See if national organizations that interest you have local chapters.

* Go to city counsel meetings to see some real problems and also some of the insanity your local leaders have to deal with.

What I think everybody would like to see is a dishonesty database containing police brutality, false criminal complaints, false accusations of misconduct, resisting arrest, ethics violations, so forth. Data can be a positive tool to keep everyone honest and embarrass liars.

> Your local police department...can help point you to some

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but to put it lightly, I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

That said I think the rest of the ideas are valid.

> Data can be a positive tool to keep everyone

I agree, but data solutions are tricky because there's so much misinformation going on right now. It's really easy for data to be fabricated (other than video (kind of)), and even if it's not, people would (rightly) be cautious to trust it. Data validation might be an interesting problem to tackle but I don't know how you solve that with tech.

On a completely unrelated matter how were you able to reassign your comments to a different username? I did not realize HN allowed that.

> I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

If you want this to work be up front about your intentions, partiality, and biases; or else you are just contributing to that misinformation you spoke of and that’s all people will see (even if/when they agree with you).

> I agree, but data solutions are tricky because there's so much misinformation going on right now.

Limit your data to reliable sources.

It's an enormous stretch to call delicate speech about my personal convictions "misinformation". Anyway, my only intent is to help people, not add to the conflict. It's just that I believe the police have dropped all pretense of sharing that goal of helping people.

Not at all, and that’s not how other people will see it. It all comes down to intention and objectivity.

Misinformation is the resultant product of people putting their personal opinions ahead of ethics and evidence regardless of what those opinions are.

I have no interest in sowing misinformation to support my beliefs, if that's what you're worried about. Otherwise I still don't really understand your point.

I don’t doubt that your goals are noble, but a lot (most) of misinformation is from well intentioned people positing their biases over objectivity. You will be contributing to misinformation if your goal is to induce a personal bias and you wish to suppress disclosure of your goals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(science)

> Sorry if I wasn't clear, but to put it lightly, I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

It's still not clear what you want.

You want to protest in the USA about George Floyd (so not current events or a broader helping) and treat all the police as adversarials?

I was trying to be diplomatic. It's my belief that the police have decided to make themselves adversarials of virtually everyone else.

I'd suggest currently society is very partisan so to make a difference try not to be, it would make you left handed batter .

A lot of police are black, are mother's, live in small communities so to many of us your view their structure can't be changed is very strange so you need to state it.

Theres a good theory de-militarization of the police short and long term would de-escalate the protests.

You could collate what's on the streets perhaps and look at local laws and procurements.

But I don't know if you even want that? Do you want the protests to slow down?

I want people who abuse power to be held accountable for it.

I want people who are peacefully protesting to be protected against violence that has often been incited upon them by law enforcement.

If I could make all of the protests peaceful then I would. But I would also amplify their message, if I could.

I know this is all very vague, which is why I solicited ideas for concrete steps.

You can't fight politics with tech, because politics win every time. Some of the things you listed don't make much sense when people are angry enough to spill into the streets to protest.

For example,

> - Combatting disinformation and/or processing data, about police abuse for example

There's already a lot of transparency on police brutality; we even have civilian oversight groups dedicated to this, but they have either been taken over by cop-friendly leaderships or they have no power to do anything.

> - Mobile panic button?

And who will come to help? Police? No, they will beat your ass for revealing your location. Protestors? No, they are too busy protesting to check their phones 24/7. Just look all the people with their hands up and chanting; their eyes are all on the police who may beat them at any time.

> - Mindfulness/mental health assistance for people trying to cope

There may be people who are depressed, but people are angry enough to be outside and protesting. Those who are clinically depressed need actual professional help, an app will not do that. Plus there are already a lot of these types of apps in the stores already, none of which replaces an actual professional

... and in any case, the government can shut any of these solutions down if they truly wanted. I think the most direct, practical way to helping with current events is to either, or all:

- Join the protestors in the streets, see the issues at hand with your own eyes instead of from media spin.

- Get in touch with your coworkers, an existing union, or start a tech union underground. Organize a walk-out, to join the protestors. White collar jobs can cause some real financial pressure and bring politicians to their knees for the cause (like how some workers at fast food restaurants refused to cook for cops during the protests).

They (literally) fight for our rights, we should get serious about what we can do too.

There have been several threads covering this in the past week or so.

I saw one for a site aggregating videos of police violence, and then the data one I mentioned. Do you have links to others?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382330

>not interested in supporting violence or doing anything illegal

Who defines what is illegal? When the System and its laws are completely stacked against you, any change can only be brought about by going outside the System i.e. by engaging in "illegal acts". You are allowed to use anything and everything to bring about real Societal change. Racism and Police Brutality need to be stamped out once and for all in the US.

Here are some of my ideas:

"Who's got the loot?"

This app could be used to keep track of which stores have and haven't been looted yet. No one wants to loot a store that has already run out of stuff.

"Children Inside"

This app could help rioters decide whether to burn down a building, if there's kids inside they can pick another one.

"Bail Me"

This app would be just like gofundme or kickstarter, except it would be for posting bond.

>This app could help rioters decide whether to burn down a building, if there's kids inside they can pick another one.

I've seen the phrase "this is like a Black Mirror episode" getting tossed a lot but this is the first time I feel like it genuinely is. Not to mention you didn't even consider a case where someone would lie or list your own house.

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