In these dark times, it is important to keep hope alive and find some light.
Here are three individuals who recently re-ignited a sense of hope in me, showing how courage, defiance and/or technical brilliance can make a difference:
- Austrian activist #MaxSchrems won a case on the Austrian supreme court, forcing Meta to give users full access to their data (it was a 11 year legal fight!)
🔗: https://noyb.eu/en/austrian-supreme-court-meta-must-give-users-full-access-their-data
- Hacktivist #MarthaRoot, dressed as a pink Power Ranger, deleted white supremacist dating sites while live on stage at the #39C3 conference and leaked the data on okstupid.lol
🔗: https://hackread.com/white-supremacist-dating-sites-wiped-okstupid-lol/
- #CaitlinCallenson, the bystander who filmed the video of the ICE officer's killing of Renee Nicole Good, shouting at him "Shame" multiple times. As John Gruber wrote on his blog: "after the murderous agent fired three shots — just 30 or 40 feet in front of Callenson — Callenson had the courage and conviction to stay with the scene and keep filming. Not to run away, but instead to follow the scene. To keep filming. To continue documenting with as best clarity as she could, what was unfolding."
🔗: https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/lets_call_a_murder_a_murder
These days I keep thinking of these three individuals... and I am grateful to them for giving me hope. And light.
