YK Hong

@ykhong.bsky.social

Head @ Keep Beyond Liberation strategy + Tech justice ykhong.com/here

Alright bookstores, thrift stores, yard sales, libraries, collectors, and book lovers. We cannot let AI have even one more book, digital or physical.

Digital decluttering is as important as physical decluttering, because everything digital is, in fact, physical. The cloud is data centers, WiFi originates from connected cables, each bit and byte lives on a drive or device in our material world.

One reason you receive varied info about privacy and security measures, is because digital security is a process. Even within the security community, our methods are a continuous conversation. What works one day, may fail in the future, under different conditions, or with different exploits.

Having grown up in a country where air pollution is such the norm that AQI is always included with the temp and weather, is shown on the boards at train stations, and we mask daily, in part, because of it, I can tell you that it’s not Canadian air or USian air. It’s all the same air.

Periodic reminder to audit privacy and sharing settings on your platforms, apps, and devices. Google and Meta, in particular, have both made privacy-breaching updates recently.

If you run an organization, shop, business, cafe, restaurant, bar, club, neighborhood, home, faith, health, social, or any space, if you have any say in any space at all, you can BAN SURVEILLANCE GLASSES. Put a sign up, and you can even ban smart glasses wearers, if they disrespect your rules.

250 years. Empire has finally reached its expiration date. LandBack. Reparations. Decolonize. Re-Indigenize. Indigenous sovereignty. Expire Empire. Liberation for all, together.

In an historic precedent, NYC tenants just won a rent freeze on all 1 and 2-year leases for rent-stabilized leases. Even if you do not have a rent-stabilized lease, even if you don’t live in NYC, this will reverberate to the entire housing industry. Less landlord, more LandBack.

When I make recs, particularly around privacy and security, it is not with a binary or perfectionist mindset. E.g., my prior chalenge to remove one of the many functions we center in our devices. This could mean using a non-smart watch, paper maps, offline translation device, or external drive.

It is easy to make a list of how our Big Tech devices can be helpful. Big Tech has spent billions, after all, reminding us why, trying to drain us of our imagination about alternatives, and removing avenues to learn.

Happy Juneteenth to Black folks all around Turtle Island and beyond. I will fight for you until my last breath in this lifetime, and continue into the next. Every single lifetime, every single universe.

What the murder by police of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley reminds us, is that he never even had a chance, because white capitalist colonialism, does not give Black folks any chances.

While it did not have to be the case, it now very much is. Big Tech is the antithesis of Community. Data Centers have become an antonym to Life. In order for us to have any semblance of Community and Life again, Big Tech and their data centers must be defeated. I say this with no exaggeration.

While it did not have to be the case, it now very much is. Big Tech is the antithesis of Community. Data Centers have become an antonym to Life. In order for us to have any semblance of Community and Life again, Big Tech and their data centers must be defeated. I say this with no exaggeration.

Attention to our community members who have been held and abused in Delaney Hall in NJ, and a spreading list of locations across the country fighting back and united in a hunger strike.

Just a thank you again to folks who take the time to introduce yourselves to me when you spot me out and about. I appreciate you because you exist, because you want to make a connection, and because I know you are also a being who is out there fighting and resisting.

If a company has NO option for human assistance and support, and ONLY has automated responses, that means the company doesn’t have the capacity to exist. If it does not prioritize hiring and paying staff to support its services, it’s missing an essential part of its services. The part about humans.

Big Tech uses the excuse of AI to make our lives more “efficient, convenient, and quicker.” But we do not need any of those to live a meaningful, loved, and beautiful life.

The way that Spirit Airlines was instantaneously shuttered, ending the jobs of 17,000 employees, flights for 1000s, many unrecoverable, and cutting off customer support altogether, this is what we should be prepared for with many companies in the coming months, private and federal.