What can a software engineer do to help the US?
The current political climate in the US sucks, and I want to do something about it. I'm a software engineer and I've been feeling lately that I need to apply my skills towards something more important and impactful than building a product for a private company. Honestly, I like my current job for many reasons, and it's been mostly quite fulfilling up to this point, but every executive order by Trump feels like a step backwards and makes me less comfortable with not being involved in the opposition.
I'm looking for advice on what I can do to meaningfully contribute to progressive causes and resist the threat that this administration poses to our democracy and society. What kinds of organizations are doing the most in this area, and would be in need of a software engineer? How can building software help with this problem (if at all)?
For context, I live in Massachusetts, so while I feel proud of how my community and local government is pushing back against Trump, I'm also well-aware of how much worse things are, and will get, for people elsewhere.
One of the reasons we are in this mess is that our social media is a mess: echo chambers, authoritarian platforms, purchase-able influence. Some of these problems could be solved by applying or mis-applying research in novel ways. I think you'd want to
increase interactions between different users, discourage the formation of large hubs but encourage small hubs to form between users.Fixing the social media problem is difficult for a single person to do; especially without government intervention if only due to the network effect and that regimes that have paid into the system don't want people leaving it for something else.
You could make something that combines ideas from Tildes and ideas from craigslist... something that is like meetup.com but only for local events and doesn't require user accounts. Maybe combine ActivityPub and Google Calendar in a novel way that's super accessible.
maybe this already exists:
You could sign up to work for Musk--not even as a "double" agent but just as a person with some personal integrity--it could be impactful. But this seems kinda stressful and potentially dangerous.
I second the idea of a local meetup thing. Something I’ve heard a desire for many times now is a replacement for Facebook Events, because there’s not much out there like it which makes users feel captive.
If maximizing impact is the goal though, I would strongly recommend finding people who are skilled at design and marketing/branding to build it with. A pattern I see repeated frequently with not just fediverse but open source projects in general is that they’re run primarily by people with technical leanings and/or people who specialize in social causes.
There’s nothing wrong with that — in fact, it’s great! These groups however have a strong tendency to not have the foggiest idea of how to make products and services appeal to the average person, and in extreme cases even very many outside their own little social circles. It makes for results that are all nutrition, no flavor, and if you want encourage society to eat its figurative veggies you’re going to have to spice things up (or at least add some butter and salt).
In fact I would say that in terms of rate of adoption, this is one of the biggest defining differences between Mastodon and Bluesky. Technically and socially speaking, Mastodon is superior, but it falls flat in mass appeal and so the masses aren’t interested in it the way they are Bluesky.
I think the term “echo chamber” is doing more harm than good these days. We should go back to smaller communication bubbles for our day-to-day conversations. We need to talk to the same few people on a regular basis to exchange and develop ideas in a healthy fashion. Some might call that an echo chamber if those people share a lot of major traits with you. But that’s how it was done for millennia.
The difference is that you didn't get to choose everyone. You got some ability to influence who you hang out with - maybe you choose a club or organization in an artsy part of town if that's how you hang - but ultimately you get a random lot of people you for all intents and purpose had to deal with them.
Echo chambers form online because entry and exit are both trivial and costless - so it's easy for one subgroup to bully everyone away in a way that isn't possible elsewhere. If you moved into a new neighborhood, and one of neighbors is in a different ideological or political faction, and you just decided to leave - that isn't really a financially feasible decision. But it is in a groupchat.
"Community" and "echo chamber" refer to the same thing, just with different connotations. Forming communities is good, the real problems are groupthink (+ believing things are obvious and/or widely-accepted that only are in the community), and forgetting that people exist outside the community (+ what those people are like).
I think it's important for everyone to interact with people outside their "bubble" at least occasionally, but spend the majority of their time with people they like (i.e. inside the bubble).
I would highly recommend working on drone swarms, preferably equipped with giant floppy dragon dildos, so that you can crash any MAGA event a la Second Life.
Might end up on a watch list or worse.
But it would be hilarious.
https://m.soundcloud.com/joshuacitarella/platform-cooperation-w-austin-robey
I was listening to this, the idea of online cooperatives and new styles of social organisation online. As a writer, I like the idea of creating new online spaces for valuing creativity. I think ventures like Ampled(now failed unfortunately) need virtuous software engineers. I can imagine these spacing growing as the web rots and, hopefully, starts to decentralise more.