[edu-eu] TheyDontWantYou.To campaign will be launched on Monday

[Guido Arnold]

Hello,

The Free Software Foundation Europe is about to launch a new campaign on
Monday. As it will be aimed at a young audience, I thought it might be
of interest to this list, too. 


On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 07:16:45PM +0100, Sam Tuke wrote:
> On Monday this campaign will launch:
> 
> http://theydontwantyou.to/
> 
> Daily messages will commence on social media. If you already use Twitter you
> can follow the campaign now to receive messages from the 4th:
> 
> https://twitter.com/TheyDontWantYou
> 
> We intend to use other social networks also.
> 
> Ask your local Fellowship group for stickers and spread the message in your
> town. Photo examples will start appearing Monday.
> 
> Join the campaign coordation team here:
> 
> https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwyt
> 
> Best,
> 
> Sam.

As it hasn't launched yet, there is not much info out about it, but Sam
presented the concept a year ago at FSCONS [1].  For those who are
interested, here's a quick summary of Sam's talk:

----

There are not enough people working on freedom. The Free Software Foundation
Europe wants to find out why and change the situation.

Amazing things are happening (occupy, fight against ACTA, etc.) which
proof that there are people thinking about their future and *do something* 
about it. Not just by signing a petition or pressing a "like" button:
They go on the streets. That's a hell of a commitment.  They are young
people, with their careers in front of them, not interested in a world
that restricts their future.

We need to engage with these people. 

We need students to think first before they invest 3 years (and tuition)
on a university  to find themselves locked in a proprietary
system/knowledge.

That's where theydontwantyou.to comes in.

---

Its about the people doing the work. We'll see where they want to go. We
start the campaign, but we don't own it.

What we have to achieve is ending the tolerance of digital restrictions
(which are everywhere). We want to rub them in people's faces, ask them: 
"What do you think about that? What's your reaction? Are you happy with
being treated as a fool, again and again and again? Now you know they
don't want you to do this. What do you want to do (about it)?"

We want to change their minds.

This isn't about negative campaigning. It's about people thinking about
the negative things they are experiencing. Creating a little space for
positive campaigns.

We will provide a different interface to ideas. Very targeted, that
doesn't say the same things we already have.

---

On November 4th,  we will start sending out one message each day
(per tweet, dent, ...) to make people aware of their everyday restrictions.
These messages don't have to be recent. The point is to show how much we have
to put up with over time.

The look of the website is a little hackerish to make it appear
rebellious and just touching base. There are only two ways: "Resist"
or "Disobey", that's intentional. From here, just move on!

We will also distribute stickers that may be used for guerilla stickering.
They are being distributed to our partner organisations (EFF, Digitale
Gesellschaft, Open Rights Group, Association of Polish LUGs) and can
be ordered through our website as well.

The whole campaign will probably last about 6 weeks. After that, we'll
measure our success by the number of participants that end up with us.


So, what you can do now to help is:

- if you have a twitter account, follow @theydontwantyou [2] and retweet
  the messages that will start coming on Nov 4.
- spread the news into other social networks or other means (no
  twitter account needed for that)
- look out for similar stories and spread them with #theydontwantyouto
- participate in discussions that may arise from the messages
- order stickers and spread them at universities, etc. [3]

Greetings,

Guido

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqOa3eXDrVs
[2] https://twitter.com/theydontwantyou
[3] http://theydontwantyou.to/street.html

-- 
Guido Arnold                       Free Software Foundation Europe
http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido    []           Edu team & German team
OpenPGP Key-ID:  0x51628D75  [][][]                    Get active!
XMPP: address@hidden    ||   http://fsfe.org/support/?guido

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