[01:05.400 --> 01:05.920]  Hi, everybody.
[01:06.040 --> 01:06.600]  Welcome back.
[01:07.280 --> 01:08.620]  A new hope continues.
[01:08.960 --> 01:11.980]  I want to thank everyone again for being excellent to one another.
[01:12.200 --> 01:13.660]  And please make sure you're staying hydrated.
[01:13.860 --> 01:16.520]  Please make sure you're keeping your masks on, including above the nose.
[01:16.860 --> 01:19.400]  And a quick reminder, we do have a fourth track of speakers.
[01:19.400 --> 01:23.540]  If you're interested in giving a 15 to 20 minute talk, just check in with the info desk.
[01:24.100 --> 01:28.560]  It's my privilege to introduce to you Jim Haugen and Sam Penalo.
[01:30.400 --> 01:32.500]  I think we've got another great talk coming up with them.
[01:32.500 --> 01:37.880]  They are co-founders of the Modest Proposals, and they're also affiliated with Extinction Rebellion and the Yes Men.
[01:38.280 --> 01:49.700]  They've brought meaningful pranks and disruptions online, and they want to talk about bringing a site up and keeping it up so that you can get your message across, even when companies don't necessarily appreciate that message.
[01:49.700 --> 01:51.460]  So, with no further ado.
[01:53.340 --> 01:54.380]  Thank you so much.
[01:55.800 --> 01:56.880]  Good evening, everybody.
[01:58.600 --> 02:02.540]  We're going to start off first by, everybody stand up really quick.
[02:04.120 --> 02:05.460]  Come on, I know you can do it.
[02:05.540 --> 02:06.360]  It's been a long day.
[02:07.060 --> 02:08.040]  We're going to stretch.
[02:08.300 --> 02:09.140]  We're going to go up.
[02:10.040 --> 02:11.440]  We're going to go over.
[02:11.960 --> 02:12.660]  Oh, my God.
[02:12.780 --> 02:13.140]  Oh.
[02:14.080 --> 02:15.760]  We're going to go the other way.
[02:16.880 --> 02:18.640]  And then a couple jumps.
[02:21.200 --> 02:22.400]  All right, all right.
[02:22.720 --> 02:23.800]  That's what I love to see.
[02:26.940 --> 02:28.420]  Thanks so much for coming, everybody.
[02:30.400 --> 02:35.880]  Today, we're going to talk about the tactics and challenges of online protests and satire.
[02:36.400 --> 02:44.420]  We're going to tell you four stories, one about the world, and three more about epic pranks we pulled on corporations and how we did it.
[02:45.520 --> 02:48.560]  But first, we want to know where we are and its history.
[02:49.220 --> 02:53.520]  We're here on land that continues to be inhabited and cared for by the Lenape people.
[02:53.800 --> 03:03.800]  New York City has the largest urban native population in the United States, and we're committed to overcoming indigenous erasure and exclusion in our organizations and communities.
[03:10.600 --> 03:11.160]  We're going to talk about climate change.
[03:11.540 --> 03:12.760]  Everybody enjoying the conference?
[03:13.620 --> 03:14.880]  Beautiful day, huh?
[03:15.300 --> 03:15.460]  Oh.
[03:16.180 --> 03:17.100]  Yeah, wait.
[03:17.240 --> 03:23.200]  We're kind of in a bit of a serious situation here with climate change that I forget about.
[03:23.800 --> 03:28.280]  So before we go any further here, I just want to get a show of hands.
[03:28.560 --> 03:30.480]  Who believes climate change is real?
[03:32.500 --> 03:33.680]  All right, put them down.
[03:34.480 --> 03:36.620]  Who believes climate change is dangerous?
[03:38.860 --> 03:40.180]  All right, put them down.
[03:40.540 --> 03:45.900]  And who believes climate change is significantly more dangerous than the amount of attention it gets in the media?
[03:48.790 --> 03:50.360]  Okay, I'm just going to be honest.
[03:50.360 --> 03:54.920]  This talk is only directed at the people who can answer all three questions with a yes.
[03:55.740 --> 03:57.200]  So if that's not you, it's fine.
[03:57.420 --> 03:58.260]  You can leave now.
[03:58.500 --> 04:02.670]  Just want to let you know we're not going to spend any time at all trying to convince you of any of those three points.
[04:03.000 --> 04:05.900]  The talk might not make sense if you don't believe those three things.
[04:07.340 --> 04:08.920]  And no offense at all.
[04:09.020 --> 04:12.080]  No shame if you want to leave at any time.
[04:13.100 --> 04:16.980]  So if you do want to stay, let's get going.
[04:18.500 --> 04:22.180]  As you all know, catastrophic climate change is already here.
[04:22.400 --> 04:24.860]  And it's being experienced all across the United States.
[04:25.230 --> 04:26.940]  People are dying in California.
[04:28.860 --> 04:30.320]  People are dying in Texas.
[04:32.020 --> 04:35.760]  And yes, people are dying right here in New York City.
[04:37.060 --> 04:40.940]  This photo was taken after Hurricane Ida caused a flash flood last fall.
[04:40.940 --> 04:46.520]  People driving on the highway drowned, trapped inside of their own vehicles in broad daylight.
[04:48.300 --> 04:52.520]  And this is all happening at 2 degrees Fahrenheit of average warming.
[04:52.820 --> 04:58.000]  But between 6 and 12 degrees of average Fahrenheit warming is our current trajectory.
[04:58.880 --> 05:11.120]  And just to be clear, average temperature, actual temperature increases that you experience on a daily basis when you're sweating your face off, can be as much as 5 times or 10 times as big.
[05:12.920 --> 05:13.670]  But wait!
[05:15.080 --> 05:17.360]  Aren't there more important factors going on here?
[05:17.700 --> 05:18.480]  Trade-offs?
[05:18.790 --> 05:20.000]  What about big business?
[05:20.290 --> 05:21.360]  What about our quality of life?
[05:21.560 --> 05:22.600]  Do we have to wear grass shirts?
[05:23.230 --> 05:28.260]  Do I have to stop taking flights or driving to cool conferences to learn about hacker tech?
[05:29.660 --> 05:33.700]  The reality is, almost all of the warming is not produced by individuals.
[05:34.140 --> 05:36.480]  It's been produced by large corporations.
[05:37.080 --> 05:40.540]  And they've done an extremely good job of making it seem otherwise.
[05:42.340 --> 05:50.060]  They've spent tons and tons of money over the past several decades to lie about the impacts of their operations, on how it's killing all of us.
[05:50.060 --> 05:53.600]  You can learn more about it in a great book called Merchants of Doubt.
[05:53.780 --> 05:55.560]  There's also a documentary about it.
[05:55.680 --> 06:01.940]  And there's also been a ton of investigative work done by Inside Climate News about what Exxon knew, going back all the way to the 70s.
[06:02.400 --> 06:04.420]  It's very well historically documented.
[06:05.100 --> 06:14.080]  And actually, the oil and gas industry paid the exact same scientists that lied about the dangers of tobacco smoke to lie about the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions.
[06:16.260 --> 06:16.940]  So, whoa.
[06:18.020 --> 06:18.600]  All right.
[06:20.060 --> 06:20.700]  Let's take a breath.
[06:24.370 --> 06:27.270]  Might be a lot of emotion coming up when we talk about the end of the world.
[06:28.030 --> 06:34.430]  So, let's just give those feelings a moment to sit, to accept them, even to welcome them.
[06:36.010 --> 06:37.430]  This is what it means to be human.
[06:37.830 --> 06:41.590]  And millions of people all over the world are feeling this with you right now.
[06:44.230 --> 06:45.910]  But, that's not what we're here to talk about.
[06:46.110 --> 06:47.270]  We're not here to talk about despair.
[06:47.530 --> 06:49.530]  We're here to talk about tactics.
[06:52.270 --> 07:00.530]  So, we've got all these huge corporations spending their huge profits literally bribing scientists and politicians.
[07:00.610 --> 07:08.410]  We're up against a hugely well-funded group of lies about a crisis that's literally killing Americans here and now, today.
[07:09.270 --> 07:10.670]  including in New York City.
[07:12.270 --> 07:13.530]  What are we going to do about it?
[07:15.850 --> 07:17.130]  Tell better stories.
[07:18.690 --> 07:19.330]  That's it.
[07:19.890 --> 07:20.870]  That's the only way.
[07:21.670 --> 07:22.750]  We don't need more data.
[07:23.390 --> 07:25.010]  We need better stories.
[07:26.350 --> 07:36.750]  The magic trick of a good story is that it uses specificity, specific people, specific places, specific relationships, to evoke universal human feelings.
[07:37.850 --> 07:45.350]  We've been designed by evolution to feel most intensely about things that are close to us, within a time and space that's understandable to us.
[07:45.350 --> 07:51.270]  We're not designed to feel anything about a 50-year projected average increase in global temperature.
[07:52.650 --> 07:54.370]  And that's what we're going to tell you about today.
[07:55.830 --> 08:03.110]  Think about Greta Thunberg, who's mobilized thousands of school children, and millions of people around the world, because she knows how to tell a great story.
[08:03.330 --> 08:05.110]  And she is a great story.
[08:07.890 --> 08:09.230]  This always cracks me up.
[08:09.470 --> 08:10.710]  This poor polar bear.
[08:13.290 --> 08:16.070]  Shell wants this little guy to work a little harder every year.
[08:17.250 --> 08:27.010]  This is another form of storytelling, a parody, a work of satire from a group called the Yes Men, that calls attention to the lies the oil and gas industry is constantly telling us.
[08:27.190 --> 08:33.050]  And this is exactly the sort of action that Jim and I and a group of activists have been working on for the past three years.
[08:33.810 --> 08:34.930]  This is how it works.
[08:37.190 --> 08:41.510]  First, you pose as an entity, and you make a statement against that entity's interests.
[08:42.750 --> 08:49.590]  Then, you pose as the entity again, and you say that the other person was doing a hoax.
[08:49.590 --> 08:56.270]  And then, you circulate a press release to reveal that the whole prank was satire.
[08:57.370 --> 09:01.430]  And for anybody who has concerns about fake news, I want to be very clear here.
[09:01.830 --> 09:03.010]  We don't lie.
[09:03.150 --> 09:04.130]  We tell stories.
[09:04.130 --> 09:05.710]  We create works of fiction.
[09:06.790 --> 09:12.470]  And our opposition spends millions of dollars outright lying to the public every year.
[09:12.890 --> 09:21.050]  The stories we tell are intended to make them look silly for being such horrible, dirty liars, and to push back on corporate control of our information systems.
[09:23.290 --> 09:31.190]  And the main avenue for distributing our stories is the press, who the action is heavily, but not exclusively, relied upon for distributing the message.
[09:32.170 --> 09:38.450]  Social media has changed a lot of things, but it hasn't changed the fact that to get your story in front of lots of people, you need a really big followership.
[09:38.870 --> 09:43.650]  And the mainstream press are still some of the biggest, still have some of the biggest audiences in the world.
[09:44.490 --> 09:50.570]  And there's a lot of social engineering tactics that we're going to go over today to help sure, to help make sure that you do get that press.
[09:51.550 --> 09:55.090]  And now I'm going to pass it off to Jim to talk about our first story.
[10:09.500 --> 10:20.000]  So, our first action, our first stumbling little steps into this crazy world we took about, we took a few years ago, was an action against Google.
[10:20.000 --> 10:23.760]  So, Google has a very well-known motto, don't be evil.
[10:23.920 --> 10:27.780]  It's probably a motto they wish me and all of you have forgotten about at this point.
[10:28.580 --> 10:33.160]  They also have some very public zero carbon commitments out there.
[10:33.920 --> 10:46.600]  However, it was revealed in late 2019 that Google was making substantial contributions to organizations that work to deny or block action on the climate emergency.
[10:46.600 --> 10:49.700]  So, a bit of a disconnect there.
[10:50.760 --> 10:57.380]  So, to pressure to Google to do the right thing, we decided to announce that they were doing the right thing.
[10:57.740 --> 11:10.000]  So, at www.agreenergoogle.com, we put up a notice, a blog post from Sundar Pichai, that said they were going to stop funding all these right-wing lobbying groups.
[11:10.120 --> 11:11.680]  Seems kind of in character, right?
[11:12.640 --> 11:14.140]  Not so much, unfortunately.
[11:16.560 --> 11:27.260]  So, this got millions of Twitter impressions, coverage from Scientific American, Grist, Protocol, and MarketWatch, who even ended up falling for the hoax and printing a retraction.
[11:28.080 --> 11:33.560]  MarketWatch is a publication that churns out a lot of stories, and they probably just didn't look all that closely.
[11:35.600 --> 11:43.020]  So, how did this action effectively game society's information system to spread the message we needed it to spread?
[11:44.180 --> 11:49.220]  Well, first off, we were working under the umbrella of the New York City chapter of Extinction Rebellion.
[11:49.220 --> 12:03.400]  So, what we did is we circulated this notice on April 1st, hijacking their April Fool's prank, asking people to post on social media with a graphic, with canned language, and a link to the site.
[12:04.920 --> 12:11.780]  Something I'd like to point out here is that the Yes Men's tactics fundamentally, at the end of the day, are about gaming the press.
[12:11.780 --> 12:15.440]  It's a very top-down model of information distribution.
[12:15.800 --> 12:17.140]  It happens to be very effective.
[12:18.160 --> 12:21.780]  This model of distribution is from the bottom up.
[12:21.980 --> 12:25.040]  We used a distributed system of users through social media.
[12:25.320 --> 12:30.620]  It's a risky strategy, but it is one that ended up paying off in this case, for a few reasons.
[12:32.680 --> 12:34.560]  It comes to one of our best practices.
[12:34.740 --> 12:37.360]  Leverage existing networks who have buy-in to your project.
[12:37.380 --> 12:39.500]  This is a big reason this was successful.
[12:40.160 --> 12:47.300]  Extinction Rebellion activists had buy-in to our project, not only on an organizational level, but also on an ideological level.
[12:48.280 --> 12:54.460]  Another reason this was successful is they were primed to participate prior to participating.
[12:54.980 --> 13:03.460]  So, getting that notice a week ahead of time, let everybody know what was coming, and also let people get excited about what was happening, too.
[13:04.260 --> 13:12.180]  And lastly, just like doing things in person, I know everything seems, you know, easier to do just because it's online, but it's not.
[13:12.360 --> 13:17.440]  We have limited time and capacity and attention as people, and digital things are very easy to ignore.
[13:17.600 --> 13:22.880]  But at this point in the movement, it was during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
[13:23.180 --> 13:26.300]  Everyone was at home, and everyone wanted to do something.
[13:26.300 --> 13:28.840]  So, lots and lots of people posted.
[13:30.520 --> 13:38.220]  A critical thing that allowed us to use this distribution model, too, is we created a non-social media presence that we owned and operated.
[13:38.380 --> 13:41.440]  We had our own website that this was situated at.
[13:41.880 --> 13:53.300]  Having the deception actively be on social media is a great way to get it clamped down on really fast, and not have the platform be able to distribute your message.
[13:53.560 --> 14:02.120]  But we created and distributed something pretty quickly that people could reasonably believe and could reasonably buy into.
[14:04.820 --> 14:13.460]  Another reason this bottom-up approach worked is Google is one of the most recognizable and most valuable brands in the world.
[14:14.740 --> 14:21.200]  So, and it was also distributed in a way, a single standalone blog post rather than a press release that made sense.
[14:21.360 --> 14:29.980]  That seems like something Google would do is just like, hey, here's a message with our CEO with a bunch of really well-done graphics and stuff like that.
[14:30.440 --> 14:32.840]  So, anything Google does is news.
[14:33.360 --> 14:40.160]  So, being from such a large brand, this probably greatly increased the virality and reach on social media.
[14:40.160 --> 14:48.220]  Same tactic against a less recognizable brand, like Synovus Energy, for instance, who everyone probably just asked themselves, who's that?
[14:49.100 --> 14:53.360]  And the target of one of our other actions, this probably would not have had the same effect.
[14:55.560 --> 15:00.020]  So, an interesting thing happened when Google responded to this prank.
[15:00.300 --> 15:06.580]  They asked our DNS provider, GoDaddy, to take down the site, but something interesting happened then.
[15:06.580 --> 15:09.700]  GoDaddy told them that this was not such a good idea.
[15:10.220 --> 15:24.060]  Now, we don't know for sure why GoDaddy said this, but it's very, very likely that this was because GoDaddy was aware of the Streisand effect, whereas a clampdown on information unintentionally amplifies it.
[15:24.500 --> 15:27.200]  So, this is an image of Barbara Streisand's house.
[15:27.200 --> 15:31.140]  It was going to be included in a coastal erosion study in California.
[15:31.750 --> 15:38.180]  This image was downloaded six times before Barbara Streisand's lawyers initiated a lawsuit.
[15:39.060 --> 15:42.120]  Two of those downloads were by her lawyers, point of fact.
[15:44.000 --> 15:49.260]  But after the lawsuit, this image was downloaded 420,000 times.
[15:49.740 --> 15:51.000]  So, why does this work?
[15:51.520 --> 15:57.560]  First off, when large actors in our society do anything, it's news.
[15:57.560 --> 16:00.460]  When Barbara Streisand sues somebody, that's news.
[16:00.860 --> 16:04.720]  When Google tries taking down a website, we can turn that into news.
[16:06.680 --> 16:11.120]  And it also illustrates just a natural tendency we have as human beings.
[16:11.240 --> 16:15.160]  Like, we want to know something that we're not supposed to know.
[16:15.360 --> 16:19.300]  If we're told not to do something, we want to do that thing.
[16:19.300 --> 16:21.440]  It's just natural, like, well, why?
[16:21.780 --> 16:22.920]  Come on, why not?
[16:24.400 --> 16:29.520]  So, this principle very much applies to Google.
[16:29.740 --> 16:30.940]  Anything Google does was news.
[16:31.220 --> 16:41.300]  And them clamping down on a bunch of activists who just publicly de-pantsed them would only multiply this effect and create a David versus Goliath narrative.
[16:41.620 --> 16:48.420]  Which, if you're doing things like this and you're doing anything as an activist, this is exactly the narrative you want to create.
[16:49.520 --> 16:59.960]  On the other hand, Google could have chosen to do nothing and let us continue to publicize the fact that, you know, they're cheerleading organizations that are funding the end of human civilization.
[17:01.560 --> 17:12.520]  This concept that Google was stuck in, that of giving your target no good options, where everything they could do serves your cause, is called a decision dilemma.
[17:12.520 --> 17:17.700]  If you're designing these things, it is your job to put your target in this dilemma.
[17:17.880 --> 17:19.960]  And this doesn't just apply to online pranks like this.
[17:20.060 --> 17:27.560]  This is a universal thing that is always worth thinking about with direct action and social advocacy of any kind.
[17:29.000 --> 17:36.820]  Critically though, both the decision dilemma and the Streisand effect, always remember, you need an audience for these things to work.
[17:36.920 --> 17:38.600]  They are pointless in a vacuum.
[17:38.600 --> 17:47.340]  So always, always, always, always have eyes on your project in the form of bystanders and document everything so you can use that later.
[17:47.340 --> 17:50.700]  So you can tell your own story through all of this.
[17:52.080 --> 17:52.520]  All right.
[17:52.800 --> 17:57.140]  For going through our next action, I'm going to pass things back to Sam.
[18:05.230 --> 18:06.130]  Thank you, Jim.
[18:08.410 --> 18:12.890]  So now I'm going to tell you a story about an action called Big Tech Loves Big Oil.
[18:14.490 --> 18:28.710]  The origin of this action was that all the major cloud providers, AWS, Azure, and Google, had all made major zero carbon or carbon negative commitments in, you know, around about 2020.
[18:29.130 --> 18:36.010]  But at the same time, they were still selling their cloud services, including artificial intelligence, to the oil and gas industry.
[18:36.810 --> 18:43.970]  Which, as we know, both caused climate change and continues to lie about how serious the crisis is in order to prevent action on it.
[18:45.690 --> 18:55.370]  So, workers' groups at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft had all put out demands that their companies end the lucrative cloud computing contracts with major fossil fuel companies.
[18:56.390 --> 19:08.050]  So, to support the workers, we built a meme generator that hosted weekly challenges for each company for workers and activists to create memes, mocking the big cloud providers for their ridiculous hypocrisy.
[19:08.730 --> 19:16.670]  We posted an announcement on social media that prompted people to sign up to participate in the challenge, and then emailed users weekly to remind them.
[19:17.450 --> 19:31.670]  The goal was to use humor as kind of a Trojan horse to create water cooler talk at the companies, especially since we thought memes would be hard to censor internally, and thus would raise awareness amongst employees about the evil work that was happening at their companies.
[19:32.770 --> 19:42.750]  A lot of memes got created by a lot of people, both inside and outside of the companies, but it was spread out over a long time frame, three weeks, and it only generated one bit of press coverage.
[19:43.030 --> 19:46.530]  So, it wasn't our most successful action, but they're still funny.
[19:47.330 --> 19:50.730]  So, here are some of my favorite memes that people created during the three weeks of the challenge.
[19:52.470 --> 19:54.770]  First is a question I think we'd all like to ask Google.
[19:55.950 --> 19:57.970]  Why are you helping accelerate climate destruction?
[19:59.610 --> 20:08.550]  This one is an artist's rendering, you might say, of Google laughing all the way to the bank while they trick us into thinking they're all about doing good.
[20:10.830 --> 20:14.850]  And this was a video that a very talented animator created for us.
[20:15.010 --> 20:22.170]  It shows the Amazon logo leaking oil all over the environment, and then turns their logo into an oil advertisement.
[20:22.470 --> 20:29.590]  The winner of the caption contest was proudly offering free two-day shipping of climate destruction.
[20:31.190 --> 20:32.410]  It'll come up in a second.
[20:36.900 --> 20:38.530]  Oh, it's not... oh, there we go.
[20:41.180 --> 20:49.320]  One of the more absurd things Amazon has done with their climate pledge is that they're going to rename a sports arena in Seattle after their very two-faced commitment.
[20:49.730 --> 20:55.920]  And of course, some of the profits that enable this kind of greenwashing come, you guessed it, from working with the oil and gas industry.
[20:57.900 --> 21:06.460]  And finally, here's another favorite of mine, the blue screen of climate death, which says your planet ran into a problem and our business needs to restart.
[21:07.420 --> 21:12.200]  Instead, we're going to keep working with oil companies to make things worse.
[21:13.900 --> 21:15.580]  So what did we learn from doing this action?
[21:17.790 --> 21:22.920]  One of the key things was that press relations really need to focus on something happening right now.
[21:23.620 --> 21:30.100]  We made the mistake of spacing out our action over three weeks, which diffused the energy that got put into it in a way that made it less effective.
[21:30.730 --> 21:35.770]  Our story to the press focused on worker agitation, but many workers groups didn't actually participate.
[21:35.960 --> 21:38.880]  We only really got support from the folks inside Google.
[21:39.750 --> 21:48.660]  And so even though we were in direct contact with environmental workers groups at Amazon and Microsoft, the conversations died after a little while, we think because of the length of the action.
[21:51.120 --> 22:03.440]  But activists using different tactics was ultimately the angle of the One News article that got written about this action from Inside Climate News, where it was compared to a Greenpeace report on the left, which was on the same topic.
[22:04.360 --> 22:11.960]  And since the action took place in the midst of the pandemic, it was focused on the result of our having to take our activism online.
[22:12.550 --> 22:18.200]  And thus, it became more newsworthy the way we were doing it, even though the participation was less than we would have hoped.
[22:21.320 --> 22:28.900]  Another key learning from this, which we took forward into the next story that Jim is going to tell, is that specificity is key.
[22:29.620 --> 22:34.860]  Focus on a single target, a single decision maker, a single action they should take.
[22:36.280 --> 22:42.400]  We targeted three different providers of cloud infrastructure in this action, you know, essentially letting them all off the hook.
[22:43.760 --> 22:49.520]  Contrast this with a greener Google success where we targeted a specific company policy and a specific decision maker.
[22:50.500 --> 22:59.400]  Specificity of target and your ask of that target will always make your campaign more newsworthy and create, make it more effective at creating the change that you want to see.
[23:00.380 --> 23:08.320]  Now I'm going to pass it back to Jim to walk us through our most recent action, the biggest wham bang of them all, the grand finale.
[23:12.540 --> 23:13.440]  All right.
[23:13.740 --> 23:14.240]  Thanks, Sam.
[23:16.200 --> 23:27.680]  So, this story starts in 2018, when the local oil refinery in Superior, Wisconsin, creatively titled the Superior Refinery, blew up.
[23:28.140 --> 23:33.500]  And the entire city, a city of 26,000 people, had to be evacuated.
[23:33.500 --> 23:48.860]  And the entire metro area of Superior, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota, were put in danger due to the very near release of a very, very dangerous lethal chemical used in oil refining called hydrogen fluoride.
[23:49.790 --> 23:53.960]  So, you think maybe, maybe the company would change practices after this?
[23:54.360 --> 24:00.060]  Maybe, you know, after, you know, putting hundreds of thousands of people in danger, they do something?
[24:00.700 --> 24:01.660]  Not really.
[24:02.040 --> 24:07.360]  So, they're rebuilding the refinery and they're still going to continue to use hydrogen fluoride.
[24:07.960 --> 24:12.460]  So, how did the company make everybody okay with this?
[24:14.220 --> 24:15.520]  Well, they didn't.
[24:16.000 --> 24:18.290]  So, we decided to do it for them.
[24:19.160 --> 24:29.220]  We created a fake community outreach by Husky Energy, the owner of the refinery, and their parent company, Synovus, called Husky Friends.
[24:30.780 --> 24:37.000]  Where, for free, if you signed up, you got SMS alerts within 15 minutes of a hydrogen fluoride leak.
[24:37.720 --> 24:43.060]  The fine print letting you know that the danger was a full release in 10 minutes.
[24:45.360 --> 24:50.040]  And, we offered to mail people a neighbor compassion kit.
[24:50.660 --> 25:05.540]  This features a soothing burn cream for chemicals, for a chemical that kills on contact, and a hydrogen fluoride gas detector that plays kids nursery rhymes, and a little Husky scientist coloring book.
[25:05.680 --> 25:07.240]  It's all about, it's all about the kids.
[25:09.260 --> 25:16.820]  And, we publicized this by sending postcards to superior residents, all of them using different domain names.
[25:17.060 --> 25:18.380]  This will be important later.
[25:19.360 --> 25:22.720]  And, in the days following the launch, we sent successive waves of postcards.
[25:23.620 --> 25:28.560]  So, this, along with press releases, is how we announced it.
[25:29.040 --> 25:32.100]  And, this is what happened next.
[25:34.600 --> 25:38.020]  Four years ago, it was chaos in Superior.
[25:38.480 --> 25:44.080]  Thousands of residents were forced to evacuate after an explosion and fires at the Husky refinery.
[25:44.360 --> 25:48.540]  Now, four years later to the day, there's more confusion in the community.
[25:48.720 --> 25:53.560]  This time, over a campaign that Synovus Energy is calling a total hoax.
[25:53.760 --> 25:58.640]  Here's a look at a postcard, sent by a group calling themselves Husky Friends.
[25:58.980 --> 26:02.840]  They claim Synovus hired them to carry out a safety initiative.
[26:03.380 --> 26:11.680]  Part of that phony campaign included neighbor compassion kits made up of things like burn cream and information about hydrogen fluoride.
[26:11.860 --> 26:15.420]  Husky Friends announced that campaign to the media this morning.
[26:15.640 --> 26:21.080]  Shortly after, Synovus Energy reached out to us, denying knowing anything about the group.
[26:21.340 --> 26:33.400]  Eventually today, Husky Friends' so-called media rep told us he's a fraud, and this was a satirical attempt to warn people about what they call the dangers of hydrogen fluoride.
[26:33.520 --> 26:39.940]  It's a chemical housed at the Superior Refinery that caused controversy after the 2018 explosion.
[26:40.540 --> 26:43.180]  Tonight, CBS3's Larissa Millis hears from both sides.
[26:43.240 --> 26:49.960]  A Superior woman who received one of those postcards and one of the people behind this campaign defending his actions.
[26:52.000 --> 26:56.560]  Diane Grimala remembers the Superior Refinery explosion like it was yesterday.
[26:56.860 --> 27:09.260]  I was in Ashland that day and I got all these calls from work saying, and they're sending pictures to me, lucky you're not here, lucky you're not here, and it just all went downhill from there that day.
[27:09.260 --> 27:15.120]  Monday, she received a Husky check, compensation from Synovus for damages caused by the explosion.
[27:15.400 --> 27:22.160]  But the same day, Grimala also received a postcard from Husky Friends, leaving her confused about the validity of both.
[27:22.320 --> 27:25.400]  I thought it was actually just them sending it out with this.
[27:25.740 --> 27:31.400]  I thought that it was for just like to brush it over and saying everything's going to be okay.
[27:31.760 --> 27:34.780]  While the checks are legitimate, the postcards are not.
[27:34.960 --> 27:37.400]  They were sent out by so-called Husky Friends.
[27:37.560 --> 27:44.880]  Jim Haugen, who says he's part of the group, says while they're pretending to be part of Synovus, the work they're doing is perfectly ethical.
[27:45.180 --> 27:56.080]  I would say that Husky Friends is an accurate portrayal of the disregard that Husky and Synovus have for the safety of the communities of superior belief.
[27:56.290 --> 28:01.920]  So we're using satire to illuminate an essential truth of the situation.
[28:01.920 --> 28:10.000]  But for Grimala, the deception arriving in neighborhood mailboxes on the eve of the explosion's anniversary is something she can't understand.
[28:10.360 --> 28:13.540]  I mean, why would they do it around the same time even?
[28:13.540 --> 28:17.100]  If it is a legit company, why would they even do it around this anniversary?
[28:17.500 --> 28:20.720]  They have to send it out at this exact day?
[28:21.080 --> 28:21.240]  Wow.
[28:22.900 --> 28:27.500]  Haugen wouldn't tell us today who he actually works for or where he lives.
[28:27.500 --> 28:33.420]  He also refused to say how much money Husky Friends has spent on this and who's funding it all.
[28:33.620 --> 28:41.580]  As of just a few hours ago, Husky Friends remained active on social media, their Twitter account sharing what appears to be a promotional video.
[28:41.820 --> 28:47.840]  In that video, Husky Friends reps appear to pitch their campaign to Superior Mayor Jim Payne.
[28:47.980 --> 28:53.020]  A city of Superior rep told us tonight they showed up to Payne's office yesterday without warning.
[28:53.020 --> 28:58.040]  That spokesperson says they felt like something was wrong during most of the conversation.
[28:58.780 --> 29:02.290]  Synovus energy officials were not available to comment on camera tonight.
[29:02.380 --> 29:05.980]  They did insist they have no connection to Husky Friends.
[29:06.240 --> 29:10.540]  No word if the company, based in Canada, plans to take legal action.
[29:20.320 --> 29:22.620]  So, fun postscript to that story.
[29:22.840 --> 29:25.480]  Also, point of order, I did tell them I was from the Twin Cities.
[29:25.480 --> 29:26.640]  That was not accurate.
[29:28.060 --> 29:46.680]  Also, fun postscript to this story is after, not only did the settlement checks from a class action lawsuit show up the same day, then we sent two more rounds of postcards, and then a huge investigative piece about a whole decade of safety failures at the refinery came out.
[29:46.920 --> 29:59.320]  And then after that, Synovus circulated a mailer to the entire city of Superior, denouncing our hoax and reassuring everyone that the refinery was safe.
[29:59.640 --> 30:04.980]  So, baited them into a response to this whole thing, which was pretty exhilarating.
[30:07.560 --> 30:14.280]  But this news story, it illustrates one of the main points about doing things like this.
[30:14.280 --> 30:16.540]  The fact is, the prank isn't the story.
[30:16.680 --> 30:19.300]  The fact that you're doing the prank is the story.
[30:19.800 --> 30:28.200]  So, we got this news coverage, but the news coverage isn't necessarily about our cause.
[30:28.580 --> 30:36.560]  It's not necessarily specifically about hydrogen fluoride or the explosion or the danger or anything like that.
[30:36.660 --> 30:39.260]  It's about this insane stunt these activists did.
[30:39.260 --> 30:44.520]  It's got like a dog walking into the mayor's office and a bunch of random postcards showing up.
[30:45.160 --> 30:49.580]  But critically, the media covering this aired our message anyway.
[30:49.960 --> 30:52.380]  They talked about the danger of hydrogen fluoride.
[30:52.500 --> 30:54.240]  They talked about the explosion.
[30:54.540 --> 30:58.980]  They showed images of the explosion next to the Husky Friends logo.
[30:59.600 --> 31:08.580]  So, even though it wasn't necessarily about what our cause was about, by doing this, we effectively got them to re-air our message.
[31:09.880 --> 31:17.120]  By our best estimates, in terms of people reached, it was around 750,000 to a million people.
[31:19.480 --> 31:21.020]  Which leads to our next point.
[31:21.140 --> 31:25.780]  The more you tie your action to real-world events, the easier it is for the media to cover.
[31:25.980 --> 31:33.240]  So, not only did we have a website, but we sent thousands of postcards out to these people, which is just kind of crazy to begin with.
[31:33.520 --> 31:42.400]  And then the media had someone to talk to, to interview, who interacted with an aspect of our action.
[31:42.660 --> 31:49.460]  In addition to that, we had a whole bunch of video footage of this mascot walking around Superior and Duluth that they could air as well.
[31:49.760 --> 31:57.180]  So, a reason we got this coverage is we handed them what they needed to cover it.
[31:59.780 --> 32:06.780]  And because it's tied to real-world events, this adds layers of credibility to what you're doing, too.
[32:07.320 --> 32:13.860]  Because the proper response to these things that you really want, it's not like, oh, look at this cute joke somebody made.
[32:13.860 --> 32:18.820]  It's also not like, oh, total misinformation, because then you haven't gotten your message across.
[32:19.220 --> 32:21.640]  The correct response is somewhere in the middle.
[32:21.640 --> 32:22.940]  It's like, wait, what?
[32:23.460 --> 32:24.400]  What happened?
[32:25.040 --> 32:26.140]  No, that's not true.
[32:26.360 --> 32:26.540]  Really?
[32:27.180 --> 32:34.000]  These are the kinds of questions you want people to be asking, because it plays on this tension of what's real and what's not.
[32:34.220 --> 32:36.460]  And that really helps drive newsworthiness.
[32:37.340 --> 32:44.960]  And finally, just in terms of a tactical choices activist, Superior Wisconsin has roughly 12,000 addresses.
[32:45.580 --> 32:48.860]  And our initial round of postcards got sent to 2,500 of them.
[32:49.040 --> 32:55.980]  That's just a fraction of one neighborhood in Manhattan, but that's about one-fifth of the addresses in the entire town of Superior.
[32:56.280 --> 33:00.260]  So this is targeted at a much, much smaller media market.
[33:00.280 --> 33:04.800]  It can be very unpredictable to get national news media to cover what you're doing.
[33:05.080 --> 33:19.300]  But this, we successfully got local news coverage and targeted specifically at a real-world piece of fossil fuel infrastructure, a real financial interest of this company.
[33:24.480 --> 33:27.000]  So, moving on to domain names.
[33:27.440 --> 33:32.620]  So your domain is probably the biggest weak point that your action will have.
[33:33.560 --> 33:44.540]  What a target will do is they will file a complaint against your domain at your DNS provider, alleging that you are infringing on their intellectual property, usually their trademark.
[33:45.000 --> 33:45.980]  You are not.
[33:46.240 --> 33:48.400]  This stuff is protected political speech.
[33:48.400 --> 33:50.180]  You are engaging in a parody.
[33:50.420 --> 33:53.040]  You are using trademarks under the fair use exception.
[33:53.740 --> 34:00.520]  Always bring this up when responding to the complaints, because not only is it true, but it's very credible sounding as well.
[34:01.960 --> 34:05.460]  First though, do not rely on only one domain.
[34:06.200 --> 34:14.300]  To put our website up, we had, just as backups of the regular domain, we had huskyfriends.com, huskyfriends.net, and huskyfriends.co.
[34:15.120 --> 34:19.200]  Because in case they take a domain down, we can easily just spin up a new one.
[34:20.000 --> 34:30.220]  On top of that, to make sure people can always get through to your site, always use a domain shortener for every link to your website and press releases and on social media.
[34:30.440 --> 34:34.360]  So it's always going to an active and valid domain.
[34:35.420 --> 34:39.660]  Third is distribute domains among different domain registrars.
[34:39.820 --> 34:41.800]  This can make your action much more resilient.
[34:42.160 --> 34:48.760]  So for each of the rounds of postcards, we not only use different domain names, but we use different domain registrars.
[34:49.580 --> 34:55.800]  Because we assumed that as soon as the postcards went out, they would file a takedown order and the website would get taken down.
[34:56.920 --> 35:09.520]  And by distributing them among different domain registrars, what we did is we effectively insulated ourselves from complaints at specific registrars and made sure our website could stay up.
[35:10.560 --> 35:13.980]  Fourth is don't use prominent domain name registrars.
[35:14.160 --> 35:18.280]  Bigger names like GoDaddy have their brand to worry about.
[35:18.440 --> 35:19.820]  Smaller ones don't as much.
[35:20.480 --> 35:24.500]  Then this can create a set of incentives that can be not advantageous for you.
[35:24.500 --> 35:27.380]  And fifth is always respond to a complaint.
[35:27.680 --> 35:30.360]  If they've taken your website down, respond immediately.
[35:31.680 --> 35:37.640]  If it's still up, maybe give it an hour and you get another hour of your website being live.
[35:38.460 --> 35:43.480]  A couple registrars we've had good luck with are internet.bs and gandhi.net.
[35:44.260 --> 35:48.360]  Critically, it's not that these guys don't care about intellectual property or complaints.
[35:48.360 --> 35:51.080]  Just in our experience, they're more likely to hear you out.
[35:54.410 --> 35:58.530]  So, the Husky Friends website collected users' emails.
[35:58.790 --> 36:08.070]  This was a part of the satire where people could sign up for the services offered because we thought it more strongly emulated the company and just made our action better in general.
[36:08.390 --> 36:14.410]  But what this did is it made our website easier to take down.
[36:15.570 --> 36:22.750]  So, Synovus filed complaints against both our server droplet and our DNS providers alleging phishing.
[36:23.090 --> 36:25.750]  Despite the fact that we were doing nothing of the sort.
[36:27.670 --> 36:30.090]  We were collecting email addresses legally.
[36:30.430 --> 36:36.950]  We did not ask anyone for their login credentials or any personally identifying information or financial information.
[36:37.130 --> 36:38.450]  But this stuff doesn't matter.
[36:38.450 --> 36:45.590]  Once collecting personal information enters the equation, you've moved the debate into a space that you don't want to be in.
[36:45.910 --> 36:50.550]  Husky Friends stayed up through a combination of just preparation and luck on our part.
[36:52.690 --> 36:55.590]  Last bit of infrastructure to go over is email.
[36:55.890 --> 36:57.790]  So, we used ProtonMail as our service provider.
[36:57.970 --> 36:58.770]  We had no issues.
[36:58.970 --> 37:05.010]  We successfully emailed approximately 600 journalists with our announcement, our fake denunciation, and our reveal press release.
[37:05.330 --> 37:08.510]  However, we ran into a bit of trouble after the action.
[37:08.890 --> 37:19.510]  Proton banned all of our accounts and additionally banned two personal accounts of mine that were not connected at all with Husky Friends after saying we had engaged in unlawful and fraudulent behavior.
[37:20.150 --> 37:24.890]  Which we're currently circulating a petition about because that's a bunch of crap.
[37:25.410 --> 37:29.130]  And we've transparently told them like, hey, this is political speech.
[37:29.290 --> 37:34.710]  Hey, we legally collected emails and we got very boilerplate responses.
[37:35.410 --> 37:37.350]  Very unfair responses in my view.
[37:38.270 --> 37:38.750]  So...
[37:38.750 --> 37:42.150]  But the key thing to take away from this is that...
[37:43.730 --> 37:47.310]  The key thing to take away from that... I advanced the slide a little too early.
[37:47.430 --> 37:47.770]  Apologies.
[37:48.310 --> 37:54.330]  The key thing to take away from that is always route your emails to a backup email address.
[37:54.590 --> 38:04.010]  This way, you can always keep records of correspondence and you can always keep up correspondence with people in case that email address, you know, goes down.
[38:04.230 --> 38:07.150]  And if your email addresses go down, they're likely not going to come back.
[38:07.250 --> 38:09.970]  There's just too many... they just have too much stuff to deal with.
[38:10.130 --> 38:16.370]  You're not going to get any kind of complaint process like with a DNS provider or a server.
[38:17.970 --> 38:26.810]  And last, one of the best practices, this is a more of an overall contextual thing, but if you're going to do these things, plug it into a movement.
[38:27.090 --> 38:29.910]  Sustained pressure campaigns actually create change.
[38:30.090 --> 38:36.030]  And as kind of fun and cool as it is to like punk corporations like this, it's... it's not...
[38:36.030 --> 38:38.070]  These actions don't create change.
[38:38.330 --> 38:39.790]  Movements create change.
[38:42.230 --> 38:46.610]  So just bring things full circle to where Sam started us on climate change.
[38:46.970 --> 38:49.690]  This is an image of the Earth from space.
[38:49.690 --> 38:55.790]  And I really love this because it really puts everything we're going through as people in context.
[38:56.410 --> 39:07.350]  So I think a lot about... I think a lot about the Drake equation, about the overwhelming probability that there is intelligent life out there in the universe that can contact us.
[39:08.390 --> 39:11.870]  But... but we haven't heard anything.
[39:12.890 --> 39:17.290]  And it's... if the odds are so overwhelming, why haven't we heard anything?
[39:17.810 --> 39:21.110]  And so it means, are we the only ones here?
[39:21.970 --> 39:26.850]  And does that also mean, like, how infinitely precious is what we have?
[39:28.090 --> 39:33.430]  And also the question comes to mind, is it our destiny to destroy ourselves?
[39:33.510 --> 39:36.630]  It is it the destiny of humanity to destroy itself?
[39:38.290 --> 39:39.710]  So how do we stop this?
[39:39.910 --> 39:41.590]  We have to tell better stories.
[39:42.350 --> 39:48.570]  So when I became a climate activist, I kept asking myself over and over and over, what should I do about climate change?
[39:48.670 --> 39:50.630]  What is my role to play in this?
[39:51.770 --> 39:57.110]  And the thing that I kept coming back to over and over and over was, we know what the solutions are.
[39:57.590 --> 39:59.390]  All that's left is political will.
[39:59.830 --> 40:03.190]  And I said, well, if that's... if that's what it takes, then that's what I'm going to do.
[40:03.330 --> 40:04.830]  I'm going to help create political will.
[40:05.370 --> 40:13.270]  And to create political will, we need to tell better stories, because narrative is the bread and butter of human consciousness.
[40:13.570 --> 40:15.710]  It's about... about who we are collectively.
[40:17.130 --> 40:18.870]  Our governments have narratives.
[40:19.450 --> 40:21.430]  Corporations have narratives they give you.
[40:21.510 --> 40:25.430]  And on an individual level, you all have narratives that you tell yourselves.
[40:25.510 --> 40:27.590]  This is who we are as people.
[40:27.830 --> 40:38.470]  And if our current narratives are driving our civilization to ruin, we need to ask ourselves what... not only what stories are we creating, what stories are we being fed, but how can we alter them?
[40:39.990 --> 40:42.290]  What can we do to change them?
[40:44.730 --> 40:47.530]  So that's... that's the fundamental question.
[40:47.810 --> 40:50.050]  How do we... how do we do this thing?
[40:53.220 --> 41:06.080]  So we've gone through a lot of things on this presentation, but I hope one of our... your biggest takeaways from this, and something I want to instill on to everyone here, is that you can do this.
[41:06.760 --> 41:09.660]  Like Sam and I didn't know what we were doing when we did a greener Google.
[41:10.040 --> 41:17.260]  We didn't know anything of the Yes Men playbook, but we just stumbled into it, and we had this thing that blew up on the Internet, and we just kind of taken it from there.
[41:17.820 --> 41:25.580]  And we continue to do this from learning from other people, and from getting help, from just like talking to people.
[41:26.200 --> 41:33.080]  And doing this kind of work, it takes a lot of the skill sets that I'll bet a whole lot of the people in this room have.
[41:34.160 --> 41:36.440]  Graphic design, web design, web development.
[41:36.680 --> 41:41.700]  If you have experience with email and spam filters, that is incredibly useful knowledge for us too.
[41:41.940 --> 41:45.160]  But all of these things are useful and wonderful skill sets.
[41:45.340 --> 41:49.620]  So if you're wondering what you can do, you have skills that can get plugged in.
[41:53.260 --> 41:55.020]  And go do these things yourself.
[41:55.320 --> 41:56.860]  Ask for help when you need it.
[41:56.860 --> 41:58.620]  Reach out to us.
[42:01.020 --> 42:05.340]  And if you don't feel like giving your info to us, that's our email.
[42:05.800 --> 42:08.200]  So please, get in touch.
[42:08.420 --> 42:08.960]  Let's talk.
[42:09.140 --> 42:10.020]  That's what we're here for.
[42:11.740 --> 42:17.080]  One last note before we close, I just want to say a special thanks to a Mr. Jeff Walburn of The Fixers.
[42:17.280 --> 42:20.220]  They're an affiliate of The Yes Men who helped create this presentation.
[42:20.960 --> 42:23.320]  And thank you to all of you.
[42:33.700 --> 42:35.980]  I think we have a couple minutes for questions.
[42:44.130 --> 42:44.670]  Hi.
[42:44.930 --> 42:45.270]  Thanks.
[42:45.350 --> 42:46.590]  That's a great presentation.
[42:46.850 --> 43:01.770]  So it struck me while you were talking about the corporate response that you may, depending on the sophistication of the corporate side, you may have had to have a somewhat thick skin, depending on what they said.
[43:01.910 --> 43:05.870]  So can you just tell us a little bit about that and your own ways of supporting each other?
[43:12.120 --> 43:16.180]  I'm not sure we have, and Sam, feel free to chime in.
[43:17.180 --> 43:22.860]  I'm not sure I've heard that much back from corporations that we've actually done this to.
[43:23.640 --> 43:33.640]  They, both, most of them have taken a very, like, they don't want to, they don't want to do anything that'll help animate this, um, animate this at all.
[43:34.480 --> 43:50.760]  However, I will say, I mean, there are, there are criticisms that I've heard from people who don't appreciate these tactics, people that, you know, I wish we, we could have won over, um, that sometimes are hurtful.
[43:51.060 --> 43:59.240]  Uh, you know, some people, some people don't appreciate being told these, you know, they're well-intentioned lies.
[44:00.440 --> 44:03.000]  They're ultimately aimed at revealing truth.
[44:03.260 --> 44:08.500]  They're not permanent lies, but they are, uh, you know, they are deceptions at the end of the day.
[44:08.700 --> 44:10.820]  Useful deceptions, but still deceptions.
[44:11.500 --> 44:12.760]  Um, yeah.
[44:13.020 --> 44:19.700]  And I might add that the thicker skin, I think that the, that you need to have is, um, is more patience.
[44:19.980 --> 44:23.380]  Um, it is about, uh, you know, it's fun to think of something like this.
[44:23.520 --> 44:24.420]  It's fun when it's over.
[44:24.580 --> 44:27.140]  During the middle, um, it's mostly not fun at all.
[44:27.760 --> 44:37.900]  Um, so, you know, being willing to work through the doubt and not, not putting too much pressure on yourself to feel like you have to know what the outcome is going to be for it to be worth it.
[44:38.740 --> 44:53.220]  Um, uh, and, you know, be, being open to the fact that you can't predict the outcome, um, is, is, uh, is really key in, in, in keeping yourself motivated and, and, and especially as we mentioned before, staying plugged into the movement, um, can, can really restore that faith.
[44:54.460 --> 44:56.480]  Um, got one more there, I think.
[44:56.700 --> 44:57.080]  Yeah.
[44:57.360 --> 45:02.060]  Um, hello, uh, amazing presentation, great knowledge, super helpful.
[45:02.320 --> 45:18.740]  I was just curious that, uh, like the greener Google, or even the Husky friends, did that impact, like, maybe their share price or something that might, you know, um, help them make a step, uh, in the better direction or something?
[45:20.180 --> 45:21.280]  Say, say it again.
[45:21.700 --> 45:22.500]  Last, last sentence.
[45:22.880 --> 45:40.720]  Um, like, did, uh, did any of these movements affect maybe even a bit on their, uh, market price, the share price, uh, that, that, you know, it may help them move toward, they may consider a, uh, uh, better approach to it, like, move towards a...
[45:41.460 --> 45:53.520]  I don't think any of these, um, uh, I mean, it's always, would be very difficult to, to make a statement about a clear causation and, you know, share price changes.
[45:53.920 --> 46:11.680]  Um, but, uh, I, I think the, um, the value in this sort of thing is, is about, is about particularly morale, uh, among the worker base and, and, and support amongst, uh, regular people for what they believe, like, is okay for a corporation to do in our society,
[46:11.760 --> 46:16.920]  whether it's okay for them to lie to us and have a, a whole team of people professionally lie.
[46:17.300 --> 46:26.240]  Um, uh, I would say it, it, it, it sort of works more in the realm of public opinion than it does, uh, in the realm of, um, of, of the financial markets.
[46:27.020 --> 46:34.460]  Um, but, but certainly you could, one could try to design an action to move the market, um, on a company.
[46:34.720 --> 46:52.240]  And, um, and actually folks have, um, the Yes Men, the folks we mentioned earlier, when they did, they did a major action focused on, um, uh, Union Carbide, Dow Chemical, um, which, which, which had a massive, um, you know, the world's biggest chemical disaster in Bhopal,
[46:52.240 --> 46:58.680]  and they, they, they made a statement that they were going to compensate all the victims, um, on the BBC pretending to be them.
[46:58.940 --> 47:01.360]  And, and I'm pretty sure their, their share price crashed.
[47:01.980 --> 47:06.120]  Um, so it, you definitely can, can do that.
[47:10.060 --> 47:11.820]  So quick question for you.
[47:12.040 --> 47:20.780]  Um, you said that you had issues using ProtonMail, um, which I found surprising, but are there any alternative providers that you're able to recommend?
[47:22.300 --> 47:24.280]  Uh, I don't know that many.
[47:24.520 --> 47:30.520]  Um, they, they all, I, I did a lot of digging into secure email providers out there.
[47:30.640 --> 47:34.120]  And there are, there are a decent amount, but a lot of them have caveats.
[47:34.380 --> 47:38.080]  Um, ProtonMail for one of their big selling points is their servers are in Switzerland.
[47:38.760 --> 47:51.020]  Um, there are ones that have very good practices, but they end up being in either, uh, um, I might get this term wrong, but like a five eyes or a 14 eyes country, uh, countries that share intelligence with each other in general.
[47:52.020 --> 48:01.480]  Um, point of fact though, even ProtonMail, even though they're in Switzerland, they were made to reveal, uh, an activist's IP address in France at the same time.
[48:01.620 --> 48:03.200]  So even that hasn't been a huge protection.
[48:03.620 --> 48:10.620]  Um, I will say, I know a lot of activists really like, uh, riseup.net, but I think you have to be invited to that guy.
[48:11.020 --> 48:14.960]  I don't know too much about their particulars, but I know, uh, a lot of them like rise up.
[48:19.820 --> 48:30.320]  Yo, uh, so this is pretty interesting to me, but how do you minimize, uh, people's natural sort of habits of having incomplete information and acting on it?
[48:30.400 --> 48:32.960]  So for example, you sent those postcards out, right?
[48:33.420 --> 48:33.580]  Right.
[48:33.620 --> 48:42.020]  Somebody receives that information and they, now they may think, oh, this is in the best interest of the company or whatever it is, companies doing the best interest of me.
[48:42.120 --> 48:44.080]  It might have the opposite effect of what you intend.
[48:44.320 --> 48:47.460]  So how do you minimize that, that sort of risk, right?
[48:47.560 --> 48:49.960]  If you're going to acting on behalf of a company?
[48:51.800 --> 48:52.560]  Yeah, totally.
[48:52.780 --> 48:59.560]  I mean, I think there's, um, uh, there's always risk involved in, uh, in doing an action like this.
[48:59.620 --> 49:01.560]  Is it going to have the intended effect that we want?
[49:01.720 --> 49:03.980]  Is it actually going to turn people against our cause?
[49:04.500 --> 49:07.580]  Um, that's, that is the risk you're running when you do this.
[49:07.820 --> 49:11.960]  Um, but at the same time, uh, we're really running out of time.
[49:12.220 --> 49:21.700]  Uh, we only have, um, I think seven more Earth days until we're supposed to be at like 50% of our current emissions.
[49:22.860 --> 49:28.400]  Um, so we're kind of in a like throw it all at the wall phase, um, and see what sticks.
[49:28.900 --> 49:41.780]  Uh, I, I think the, um, you know, whether, whether or not people act on it and, and in fact, like think better of the company, which I think some people in Superior did, they got the, they got that postcard and they were like, wow, they care about us.
[49:41.940 --> 49:42.680]  This is great.
[49:43.560 --> 49:47.440]  Um, I, I don't, I don't see that as a mistake or an error.
[49:47.620 --> 49:50.520]  That's like, I think, you know, a feature, not, not really a bug.
[49:50.900 --> 50:01.540]  Um, and it's just, it's just that, you know, we hope that on balance, the number of people who received that information and had that thought are much less than those who saw the news story.
[50:01.640 --> 50:08.540]  For example, the, the postcard wasn't the 2000 people that saw the postcard wasn't the, wasn't the, you know, key audience.
[50:08.700 --> 50:11.540]  It was the 750,000 to a million people that saw the news story.
[50:15.600 --> 50:16.540]  Thank you all so much.
[50:16.720 --> 50:17.180]  Thank you.
[50:26.250 --> 50:26.730]  Thank you.
[50:26.850 --> 50:27.070]  Yeah.
[50:27.250 --> 50:27.750]  Thank you so much.
[50:27.850 --> 50:28.270]  Thank you.