Thursday the 13th – At Harvard

We are resurrecting the Cooperation group for a double session of two exciting talks!

First, our friend and BKC fellow Yaso, will share a very successful activist project which is visibilizing unethical political expenditures in Brazil and Italy using Twitter bots, Telegram and open source tools.

Second, a guest and friend, Danny Spitzberg, is here from San Francisco to share the popular #BuyTwitter campaign, an initiative for the Twitter users to buy the platform and turn it into a platform co-op.

Third, we hope to go for drinks afterwards!

As usual, we will convene this Thursday, at 5pm, in the Conference Room at the Berkman Klein Center. Anyone interested in the topic is very welcome. We would appreciate if you spread the word!

Below you have additional info on both talks:

High impact activism with no resources: visibilizing unethical political expenditures (Yasodara Cordova)

Sometimes, you don’t need new and expensive tools to create colaboration. More generally, if a collective has no resources, but a good idea, how can communities aggregate outsiders in digital platforms? The #SerenataDeAmor Operation is a collective effort to mitigate and visibilize small leaks of money (due to corruption and unethical practices) that runs in politics (so far in Brazil and Italy). The project used very cheap infrastructure based in free/open source tools and commercial social media, to go beyond the activist bubble.

#BuyTwitter (Danny Spitzberg)

The campaign #BuyTwitter (https://www.buytwitter.org) aims to democratize the Twitter platform, with broad-based ownership and accountability similar to a co-op. Danny Spitzberg, a researcher studying cooperative conversions, is one of the volunteers behind this effort and will share what the group has achieved so far, as well as several scenarios they’re exploring with Twitter, other platforms, and rural co-op ISPs, too.