I chuckled when our daycare had a lengthy discussion about data privacy and, twenty minutes later, asked every parent to join the WA group.

I joined a few orgs fighting for a systemic change, understanding the decisions process and be a part of it, more collective life in support of all the discriminated people and a more ecological way of life. Left-leaning stuff.

All the public communication happens on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Private comms are on whatever those platforms have, or Telegram and Discord. Only a minority have Signal and most don't want to hear about it.

When I tell them there's an internal issue because you can't change the world and give more power to the people by using anti-users tools like those, they look at me like I'm from another planet. There's a long road ahead.

> I joined a few orgs fighting for a systemic change, understanding the decisions process and be a part of it, more collective life in support of all the discriminated people and a more ecological way of life. Left-leaning stuff.

That's fascinating, because when I joined similar groups last year, they all emphasized using Signal for private comms. They were, in fact, the only people I talked to Singal on, because nobody else I knew really used the app back then.

Perhaps there's a stronger privacy culture in some activist groups versus others.

From my very little experience there are a few categories:

- groups where privacy is a matter of personal security will actively use Libre Software and their own services because it's just too important

- groups emerging from the technical world will naturally adopt Libre software and decentralized services because tech doesn't scare them

- everyone else comes from a world where FB/Twitter/Instagram is the norm, so when they group together on issues related to the physical world they will continue to use the digital tools they are used to

There is a real work of deconstructing our tools and the prevalence of big tech in our digital world, just like there was a necessity to deconstruct the position of white males in a patriarchal, occidental society.

I had that issue here too in an org here in the Netherlands.

I was working on the tech end, and a lot of our time was spent transferring events from Facebook to other platforms by hand. I asked, "Why are we on Facebook? These guys are completely against us!" and everyone looked patronizingly at the old guy and said, "We need to get our message across in every platform!"

They were completely clueless, and I loved them, but I had to leave.

In particular, there was one guy working with us who had spent their whole lives working for [large company directly opposed to this org].

I asked him once in passing when he left and he didn't answer. I thought nothing of it, but he started to refuse to answer other questions - not in a hostile way, just always changing the subject.

Then I talked to someone else, and this guy had tried to sneak himself in as a "superadministrator" in another project, even after he'd been explicitly told not to. They asked him about why he did that, and again, he just acted as though he had never been asked.

More of this stuff happened. Particularly, the whole "gaslighting and pretending you never answered the question" got to me.

Eventually I brought this up in a meeting with a few people in charge. Everyone thought I was crazy - but trying to hack into a system and then refusing to answer questions, and being thrown off that project?

I left.

The worst part was I liked the guy, and we never argued or anything.

That's an interesting point of view, and a paranoid person would question the true motives of such a person in that org: were they in for the collective ? For personal gains ? Working as an agent for a third-party ?

> I asked, "Why are we on Facebook? These guys are completely against us!" and everyone looked patronizingly at the old guy and said, "We need to get our message across in every platform!"

This is actually a point I totally agree with: you have to talk to people where they are, especially when they don't already agree with you. But in my opinion it sends a wrong image and such orgs should use Libre Software and decentralized networks first, and only on top of that use FB/Twitter as a copy-paste of the main platforms.

There's a very important step to do that is to categorize who your target is. Basically it's a bunch of concentric rings: those who agree with you, then those who are questioning and need a bit of information, then those who aren't thinking about the subject yet... you have to convince those around you, who will convince those around them, and on and on. In that vein, sticking to decentralized platforms first and gradually growing makes a lot of sense

Indymedia had a collection of global mailing lists, run using private mailservers with no logs, and a private (encrypted) IRC server (with a web interface, and also with no logs). Nearly everyone in Indymedia operated under a pseudonym. But over the course of the noughties, most activists moved over to Faceache.

I never understood why activists would adopt pseudonyms, but refuse to use the (relatively) secure communication channels we provided, in favour of Twat and Faceache. Being involved with Indymedia was risky - it was infiltrated by undercover cops, and some of the people posting to the newswire were probably involved in criminal acts (e.g. criminal damage).

In the Whatsapp group, you don't have to share anything about yourself or your child that you don't want to. The daycare might only post very generic info about opening times, events, etc, or it might be one used only for parents to communicate among themselves, at their option.

Facebook know who is in the group and what they post but none of it is necessarily confidential information.

On the other hand, the daycare as part of their operations know lots of details of your children's development, health issues, allergies, mental health, educational attainment and special needs. They know if you are getting divorced, who has custody, if there are dangerous people in the child's life and so on.

Is keeping this private really in the same ballpark as choosing to have a WA group or not?

The fact that the bar for data privacy should be very high for the daycare shouldn't diminish the need for data privacy in the daycare-recommended parent group.

I've broken contact with a reasonably tech-savvy part of my family. I have to decide between being informed about current events and hoping the next Meta leak doesn't have my full name, number, hometown, and possibly group memberships.

Most people are not like you.

Let's turn your question on its head: if using an application fighting to keep users' privacy as high as possible, such as Signal, just as easy as using Whatsapp, why use the latter ?

The premise of your question is obviously flawed: it is not as easy. The precise reason why WA is used is that it's easier, because vastly more people already have it installed.

But anyway, it's just not a priority for a daycare.

Guaranteeing that for example staff don't respond to enquiries about children's health unless it's from the parents is a priority.