Can anyone vouch for iceout.org? Especially after reading about how awful the ICEBlock app is and was, I'm a bit wary of referring folks to a service that I don't know much about.
iceout.org sends up a few red flags for me (very corporateized and OSS-hostile terms of service, only social media links to Facebook and TikTok, Google Forms link for "support us," list 501c3 but no links back to governance or members), so I want to do my due diligence here?
I don't want to critique from the sidelines here, or insist you have to do activism perfectly for it to be useful, but those are some giant red flags. I worry about security given how much corporate tech is working directly or indirectly with ICE, and I am wary of recommending something that I can't be confident in.
@xgranade I don't know about them, but I do know that if your gut feeling says something is off, there probably is. And for what it's worth, these red flags sound very red.
@mahryekuh I keep finding article after article about how the founders are all anonymous, which... I get the safety need, I really do! But also, asking folks to trust something that sensitive sight unseen is really not OK.
It's also very much so not how 501c3s work! And is that even the right structure, given the compromises you need to make in order to retain that status?
@xgranade I've found their organization, and can say they do have 501c3 status, but can't determine much beyond that. The Articles of Organization are extremely bare-bones, leaving much to the bylaws, and as far as I can tell the bylaws aren't published.
Since they established less than a year ago, there's not anything to learn from tax filings.
All in all I'm not sure what I've learned from this except that they do have someone very bureaucracy-savvy.
idk whether to link to it or not. On the one hand, it's public record, and has been outed on birdsite... On the other hand, if they're trying to keep a low profile, it feels discourteous to post it.
@keturn That's all good to know, thanks for looking into that! And yeah, I absolutely understand the need to stay anonymous, just also tricky from the other end, I suppose...
