YSK: There's a protest today at noon at your state capitol.
YSK: There's a protest today at noon at your state capitol.
Posts on various social media platforms called for demonstrators to show up at all 50 U.S. state capitols.
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I’ve heard from some of my more active friends that none of the usual leaders or orgs they know of were a part of founding this and there’s some suspicion it was created by right wingers to collect data; can anyone speak to this?
Edit: It seems that this claim is likely being made (either maliciously or like in this case just stupidly :P) to suppress protest turnout.
What do you mean "to collect data"?
Attending a protest opens you up to people knowing you attended a protest. That's pretty unfortunate yes, but why would this specific protest be different from any other one in that regard?
https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest
Edit: Phrasing
I’m just echoing some suspicions I’ve heard from more knowledgeable friends and was asking, I don’t really know enough detail to have any opinion myself; sorry if it’s a silly question.
I’ve just heard that organizers coming out of it/ the Reddit accounts that originally elevated it seemed astroturfeyand there’s concern there, and I’ve seen some more paranoid ideas thrown around about it but idk
it seemed astroturfey
Fascinating. Can you ask your friends for more details? Surely for such an urgent concern, they'd be happy to share with you so you can pass on an important warning about it.
My suspicion of these "data collecting" / honey pot claims are that the claims themselves are suppression tactics
Ugh I hope not, if so it’s worked on at least a few people in my community and I apologize for helping it propagate with my comment here
Yes, that's more or less exactly what I was hinting at.
Of course, I would never do something as badjacketing as accusing some other poster of posting vaguely anti-protest stuff that doesn't make any sense, as some kind of deliberate astroturf, except that they seemed to feel totally comfortable accusing me of being "astroturfey" for posting the original thing.
You should absolutely be careful of your privacy at these events. But accusing one specific one of being a fake for "data collection" is totally strange.
I definitely didn’t intend to imply or accuse you of being astroturfey or anything else for that matter and I’m truly sorry it came off that way. It seems I should be much more careful in my wording. I did a bad job of paraphrasing something I heard about how the original Reddit accounts and lack of traditional organizers are a bit suspicious.
At the end of the day I think we’re all scared and trying to navigate a complex media ecosystem and it’s easy to make mistakes.
I genuinely have heard concerns from friends and was trying to check their veracity. It seems from what I’ve heard here that they are bogus and I’m grateful to the commenters who have pointed that out.
I added an edit to my original comment to try to make this clearer to anyone else who’s been fed the same misinformation as me and I’ll definitely share that with my community.
Which upcoming protests would your knowledgeable friends recommend going to instead?
I definitely will ask, that’s what I was trying to do with my original comment. It seems like it’s not a widely shared concern which I’m very glad to see.
I definitely don’t mean to discourage attendance or anything like that, I totally agree with you that as long as people are cautious about PII, etc. there shouldn’t be more risk here than at any other protest
Sure, let me know what the friends of yours who you heard this from say about it.