this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Anyone who is buying vanity domains, nevermind tech companies, is giving the British government far more money every year through taxes, even in the US. And divestment from the .io TLD is not, as far as I can see anywhere in the advocacy links they provided, cited as part of their activism, so doing it doesn't send a message to anyone.
If the Chagos people are not making the argument for divestment, why is the author?
In another blog post the same author equates Apple taking out ads on Twitter, to Apple doing anti-LGBT+ advocacy, and I think there's an important parallel to this post:
It's one thing to hold views like
But taking those viewpoints, which are very much NOT the common view by most people, and then using them to accuse said people of being pro-settler-colonial or anti-LGBT+, is not a workable or even helpful position.
If all the tech companies divest of their .io domain names right now, what will that gain the Chagos people? If we're being honest, absolutely nothing. Hell, if the companies don't all issue press releases as they do it, I doubt even the Chagos refugees themselves would think it had anything to do with them.
Maybe I'm just getting tired of activism that seems content to revel in its own... mindfulness, we'll call it- without actually trying to change anything, but it feels like the author would have been hard-pressed to choose a position to advocate that has LESS chance of helping the Chagos people without just being totally unrelated.
Completely agreed. If anything this kind of accusation pushes people to the right as they got defensive.
Every significant organisation, government, big company probably had done something terrible at some point. The world is not black and white. Internet activism is "not helpful".
If people want to help the refugees, donate to organisations helping them. Or even better, volunteer to help them. Stop doing "purity tests" in the online world.
Yup, which is why it's basically impossible to be an ethical consumer these days. "The Good Place" did a really entertaining exploration of this idea.