Loomio
Fri 31 Aug 2018 10:16AM

De-Googling Social.coop's Working Groups

CG Cathal Garvey Public Seen by 57

It seems that a lot of things happen on Google Docs, Google Hangouts, etcetera.

Google is a surveillance company with close ties to the US surveillance state and military-industrial complex. They already aggressively track our membership everywhere they can. Social.coop's social spaces, and especially our organising spaces, should be as free of this actor's influence as possible.

Requiring members to create or maintain accounts on services with such invasive privacy policies (enabling all kinds of invisible harms through data sales and purchases, correlations, data-sharing deals with unknown third parties, possibly including direct but invisible financial harm to marginalised groups), operating out of essentially unregulated countries, is harmful.

Alternatives absolutely exist and are widely used and trusted:

  • Hangouts -> meet.jit.si
  • Docs -> Etherpad
  • Calendar -> Loomio
  • Polls -> Loomio
  • Discussion -> Loomio / Mastodon / Matrix/Riot

I just want to open this conversation, for now. If we want to write policies about what is deemed an acceptable tool to force others to use or participate in, then maybe some decisions should pop up here to discuss those.

GSF

Gil Scott Fitzgerald Sat 1 Sep 2018 2:02AM

@cathalgarvey thank you for bringing this up, I've read the thread and I think we're in agreement in general on the importance of free software, although I also believe that this is something the will need to be put on the backburner until the other issues are resolved.

F

freescholar Sat 1 Sep 2018 4:51AM

I just got off of Gmail Woot! It was tricky. The more we use and support free software the more free we shall be. Here is a reference type blog post with some options - http://agaric.com/blogs/daily-business-operations-using-free-software

AR

Antoine-Frédéric Raquin Wed 5 Sep 2018 11:21AM

We wouldn't be on an AGPL-licensed platform if we didn't slightly care about free software.

While we do have priorities, this thread could be used as a general thread for Google alternatives and good-faith discussions about why, why not, using these alternatives, while clearly keeping in mind that it's just for coffee-break chats.

M

Miloš Wed 12 Sep 2018 2:16PM

This is a great idea. Some of these are already functional. In my experience, very large groups doing horizontal organizing use Etherpad/Ethercalc very effectively. This includes non tech-savvy people.

Can we use Matrix/Riot for group chat/video?

In terms of Calendars, could a Baikal/CalDAV instance work instead of Loomio? I'm not familiar with Loomio's calendaring features, and not sure how standards' compliant they are.

Thanks for getting this discussions started!

MN

Matt Noyes Wed 12 Sep 2018 2:24PM

I have found Matrix most useful for one-on-one chat. We tried using the integrated jit.si video chat but it was not reliable so mostly we use Zoom. For group chat we are using Loomio threads, social.coop toots/replies, and Matrix -- it gets confusing to have discussion spread across three platforms. Docs are edited in etherpad and (mostly) stored on git.coop.

M

Miloš Wed 12 Sep 2018 2:29PM

I hear what you're saying on confusing - maybe Matrix could be a central place for discussion via a bridge to link up social.coop toots/replies and Loomio threads?