For anyone who has a Ring camera, wants to get rid of it, but still wants a doorbell camera for security/convenience reasons, I’ll point out that Ecobee has a fairly good rating on Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included page where they review products for their privacy.

E2EE transmission of video from the camera to your phone when streaming, on-device processing of video feeds, auto-deletes any cloud footage when people uninstall the app (so non-technical users who think uninstalling an app deletes their data will actually get that benefit), only saves clips when actual motion is detected, first line of their privacy policy is “Your personal information and data belong to you”, and their subscription is 100% optional.

Only real privacy concern is that if you choose to integrate yours with Alexa, it might get some data from that, but that’s optional. The main downside is just that they only have a wired option for outdoor setups, but they do have an indoor one that doesn’t require any kind of hookup directly into wires in your wall.

As always though, if you have the technical ability to set something up yourself that runs only on your local network, do it.

I don’t think these corporations deliberately aimed their content at any age group.

Instagram intentionally targeted ads at teenagers specifically when they were identified as feeling low self worth or depressed. https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/09/meta-whistleblower-sarah-wynn-williams-says-company-targeted-ads-at-teens-based-on-their-emotional-state/

Instagram used this data to more effectively keep teens hooked on the app. For example, they’d show a girl who just deleted a selfie out of embarrassment more photos of attractive women, which she would then likely scroll through, attempting to internally figure out how she could become attractive like them. Coincidentally, the perfect time for Instagram to then serve an ad for a new skin cream, weight loss program, etc.

I bought them and saw the “Buy N Bulk” one and thought it was them advertising that they like sold them in big bulk bags now or something 😭

Same.

Local rapid response networks exist to help intimidate ICE whenever they appear. Local soup kitchens and other similar charitable organizations can use your help, as the people who are most often targeted by this administration are those who are already poor.

Go to local meetings any time someone proposes legislation that harms marginalized people, expands surveillance measures (e.g. ALPRs), or alters the favor of elections towards the far right, and make your voice heard. You can also comment on regulations.gov whenever certain legislation is put out, and your state legislature should have a way to contact your reps there, too. Our representatives aren’t fully beholden to us, but they’re known to cave under public pressure, and every little bit of pressure helps.

Donate to organizations that slow down the effort of the administration, like the ACLU, or more specific ones for any given issue (e.g. the FFRF for religion-related fascist policy prevention, the EFF and Fight For the Future for digital rights and surveillance, Climate Defiance for both climate and general political activism that disrupts bad politicians and billionaires where they live and work, the Internet Archive for archiving information the administration tries to take down, etc)

You can also just go to nearby protests. Check out 50501 and Mobilize for a lot of more common ones you can expect to find a lot of people at, but also just figure out other local groups in your area that might be holding events, marches, protests, boycotts, etc.

Speaking of that, boycott businesses that support the regime when you can. Boycott Here, BDS Movement, Boycott Citizens are all good resources, and there are always more targeted campaigns like QuitGPT.

Do mutual aid for your neighbors who need it, get a whistle you can use if ICE shows up near you (remember, 3 long blows is ICE nearby, long blows is ICE detaining. If you hear whistling from someone else, get out there, record, and use your own whistle to make sure others do the same!), canvass/phonebank for local candidates, or even candidates in other cities/states, to get local policies implemented to make your communities more safe. Progressive Victory is great for that. (though it does require you using Discord)

Outside of that, you can always show up to your local ICE facility and just generally be a nuisance. They hate that shit ;)

“If you would all just put in even more effort within a system that economically, physically, and mentally crushes you for your entire life, the billionaires won’t have to give up their undeserved wealth! Whaddaya say, guys!?”

Good. Give these thugs real consequences for their actions. Want to work for ICE, attack and murder your neighbors, and terrorize your community? Good luck getting the job you might have wanted for the rest of your life.

Personally, I think this should be taken further. Ban them from every single job the state of California hires for in any department. Revoke some tax benefits for businesses that hire former ICE agents. Do everything legally possible to make becoming an ICE officer into an economic death blow that will make it impossibly hard to find employment after.

I feel like that’s 99% of cases and it’s really disheartening. Good to see them actually get what should have happened to all the others a long time ago.

since those are the ones who set strategy.

Not entirely, actually. That part surprised me when I first went. They couldn’t control what I handed out to people for sure, and there were numerous organizations with stand-up tents there that weren’t listed as part of the official organizations, and one of them even explicitly mentioned to me that the organizers weren’t happy with them being there, but they didn’t care and had set up 4 separate booths around the general area of the protest.

I still believe the pace is catastrophically slow

That I can 100% agree on. Though it does seem like the pace is picking up more as time goes on.

I mean, I’ve talked to them in person? I’ve seen them countless times before this, and many of them have been organizing before Trump was president. Not only that, but I’ve seen the outcomes.

The local ICE rapid response networks in my community would not have nearly as many members had they not gotten tons of people at the last No Kings protest near me to sign up for their newsletters, the local progressive candidate would have been guaranteed to lose the election without the slim margin added from people at the protest becoming aware of their candidacy, and my reps probably would not have become more vigilant in their anti-ICE sentiment as a primary talking point over just a general wishy washy vibe of not being okay with it had they not seen so many of their constituents turn out.

My community has a progressive candidate in office who has plans to prevent ICE actions, police misconduct, and also make where I live more affordable, it has thousands more people on standby with whistles and plans to disrupt ICE activity if it happens near them, and it has my representatives voting no on funding ICE, instead of voting yes and saying “but we’ll give them QR codes though.”

If that’s not a concrete positive outcome, I don’t know what is.

I get the sentiment sounds better to you than the amount of results you’d get from a No Kings protest on its own, but you cannot honestly believe that your local wine mom is going to wake up one day and literally grab a noose, go out with her friends, build some gallows, and then find a way to kidnap armed ICE officers.

You would never even get remotely the same turnout if you called for that vs No Kings, because one is something you can do with minimal risk to your personal safety, the other is a guarantee you WILL be shot at, gassed, and almost certainly killed by the authorities.

Essentially, you’re saying that anyone who wants the situation in this country to be better should be willing to almost certainly die on the spot because there’s a tiny sliver of a chance they might be able to kill some ICE agents before they do.

As a reminder to people I already know will be furiously typing that these protests won’t stop trump, or that they don’t stop anything: that’s not the point.

These protests exist to stop people from feeling hopeless, then to get them energized and motivated, then to give them ways to exercise their rights and free will to actually do concrete actions.

Holding a sign at a protest doesn’t stop Trump, but giving millions of people booklets, cards, zines, and papers that direct them to their local ICE rapid response networks, get them canvassing for leftist politicians in their area, and giving them hope that lets them keep doing those things in the future is infinitely more valuable than saying “stay at home, these protests are worthless, now somehow organize your entire community to go raid an ICE facility or something, while you have no motivation or hope for the future because you feel alone.”

These also exist to dispel narratives fascists use to justify their abuse of power. Nazis feel afraid when confronted with the fact that there are a lot more people that hate them than people that are with them. It’s why ICE officers routinely leave scenes of arrests empty handed when enough community members show up. They’re cowards.

At the last No Kings I went to, the organizers told everyone that they knew there would be people on the sidelines trying to agitate protestors, disrupt chants, and spread pro-Trump messaging. None of them showed up after they saw the size of the protest. The closest thing to it was someone in an apartment building too afraid to even put a sign outside their window playing a shitty rap song about missing a shot at Trump, with great lyrics like “B*tch, you missed”, and “the left can’t aim.”

The alternative is everyone staying at home, getting progressively more angry and simultaneously hopeless, while the Nazis in power get even more emboldened from seeing only the few, more radical individuals willing to take action into their own hands while everyone else feels to hopeless to do anything, and I don’t know about you, but that’s not the world I want to live in.

I agree that these protests are very liberal and often convince some participants that the act of the protest itself is enough, that they’ve done their civic duty, but the people who are convinced by that are the same people that already self-limit the extent of their political action to holding an anti-ICE sign on the side of the road while people honk. They were never going to engage in any kind of actually disruptive protest in the first place.

The main problem is that LLMs are pulling from those sources too. An LLM often won’t distinguish between highly reputable sources and any random page that has enough relevant keywords, as it’s not actually capable of picking its own sources carefully and analyzing each one’s legitimacy, at least not without a ton of time and computing power that would make it unusable for most quick queries.

maybe one where they join together in a kind of organized… group? collective? I don’t know what the word would be for that, but it’s right on the tip of my tongue…

Wow, a bug that specifically automatically chose keywords like “ICE”, and “epstein”, then blocked them from appearing, while leaving literally all other content unharmed??? How conveniently specific and well-timed! /s

General strikes are illegal in the US.

It’s not illegal to strike on a date with other people. It’s illegal for unions to call for a “general strike” because it’s considered them calling a strike on behalf of other non-union employees for other businesses.

Also, jobs can fire workers on the spot for participating in them

Not always, (though yes, it would probably be likely for many people) since they can use things like sick/vacation days conveniently timed right, or if they’re backed up by a union, they might have a contract that helps to prevent at-will firing without certain specific causes, excluding striking.

However, if enough people strike, it’s kind of hard to enforce coming into work via firings, as it’s similar to if an entire unionized company goes on strike. What are you gonna do? Fire every single worker and shut down for good the next day because the only person running every single operation is the remaining CEO?

even if the workers are part of a union and the union want to participate.

As long as the union doesn’t say “this is a general strike” and just says “we are striking on this date for better working conditions”, and that date happens to be the same day other unions are striking, it’s legal. There is no law preventing different unions from striking on the same dates, and it would take very long for any legal process to try and make that claim before the strike has already occurred.

national guards have been sent in to shut down general strikes in the past.

This is the most likely outcome in my opinion. However, it’s still kind of hard to actually enforce the end of a general strike. It’s one thing to arrest someone, or to stop them from doing a given thing, but it’s another to forcibly remove people from their homes and make them work no matter their condition or reason.

Essentially, I’m saying it’d be messy.

Doing it multiple days? You realize most people live paycheck to paycheck? Nobody wants to tell their kids they’re going to be homeless.

This is the biggest hurdle, though there is a degree to which it can be mitigated, at least for a little while. For example, there are a lot of people with backyard and community gardens, small businesses with stockpiles that are willing to support their community as we’ve seen with the current situation in Minnesota, not to mention that if the situation got bad enough you’d probably just see people stealing from their nearest billionaire-owned store because fuck it, why not screw them over more?

To clarify, I’m not like, disputing your actual overarching thesis here, or saying a general strike is easy or likely to succeed, I’m just saying it’s not entirely impossible :)

Good. Fuck 'em.

little bit of sharpie over a white square and BOOM, unreadable.

Or, better yet, they’ll just do what they’ve already done, which is simply ignore the requirement. If they won’t follow anywhere saying they can’t wear masks, they won’t wear the codes. Simple as that.

Most of the time, if someone’s phone is confiscated by any kind of officers/agents, it’s gonna be stored somewhere just so they can have it. Even if they don’t want to release a video, they can still crack your phone and get your data, (considering your phone has to be after the first unlock state to record things on it, it would be trivial to exfiltrate all data on the phone unencrypted) like your messaging history, to later paint you as a terrorist or find some other thing they can use to smear your reputation as a martyr.

They don’t want to release the video because it’d make them look horrible.

Exactly. As the ol’ saying goes: “the Right looks for converts, the Left looks for traitors.” We need to change that.

The reason the far right has grown so much is because of how they bring people into the fold. “oh, you were one of them libtards, but now you support our one true god Donald J Trump? Hell yeah brother, welcome to the side of the patriots!!11!1!” vs. “oh you voted for Trump, but now you hate ICE? We warned you this would happen, fuck you Trump voter!”