Yeah I thought that was weird too. This is important! But not enough for me to make time for it!

Everyone needs to take action, even if it's the smallest possible action. Take a minute to donate to the EFF or tweet about the issue, or five minutes to write a blog post that actually rallies and informs people. What can we start building now to prepare for when this threat starts manifesting as legislation?

I am happy to help, and honestly if I had more time right now I'd take this on directly--right now is an unusually busy time for me. I agree with you it's critical to Silicon Valley.

Sorry to say, but that's the same for ~everybody. There's always a project to launch, one more feature to code up, one more customer to close, one more support email to respond to.

Thankfully, someone else saw the need for a group of people dedicated to fighting for everybody's rights online, back in 1990. I'm talking, of course, about the EFF.

So you can donate.

The head of the FCC doesn't believe in net neutrality, so it's going to be a long fight so they could use your support.

http://eff.org/donate

Given Elon & Thiel are both in contact with Trump, if you haven't already done so, it would be worth mentioning it directly to both that this is important to you.

For that matter, maybe this is a chance to you yourself reach out to Trump on an issue and invite him to meet at the White House or come to the Bay Area to meet the next batch of YC startups.

If anyone does this in the bay area and it's public, they will likely be burnt at the stake.

You mean like Elon, Thiel, etc.? If so seems to me as if they're all doing just fine. [1]

Beyond that, point of engaging Trump would be on a topic I would assume everyone agrees is important - and if you think hidding and hoping things will magically get better, well, good luck!

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-meeting-photo-jeff-bezo...

Thiel was attacked nonstop and people were organizing to stop using PayPal which he is only tangentially affiliated with.

Uber CEO had to stop his collaboration as Lyft started catching up for the first time in a long time.

Elon also faced a lot of heat and had to qualify his statements. Negative reactions towards him were counteracted by his accomplishments and clean energy contributions.

I think people should collaborate but in a clandestine fashion.

Inviting Trump to Bay area would unleash all the rage against Trump towards the startup community. I'm just afraid it would be a bigger "throw stones at Google buses"

Be afraid all you want, doesn't matter to me.

Thiel knew he'd be attacked, took a risk, and there's zero reason to believe he's not happy with the results; if you think Thiel cares what the "Bay Area" thinks, I'd be interested in your reasoning.

Uber's not even worth covering, they're currently a cluster F$&@ waiting to happen and the idea that it was somehow born of talking with Trump is what it is.

Bay Area and for the matter the greater tech community needs to engage the world, not withdraw from it.

>Bay Area and for the matter the greater tech community needs to engage the world, not withdraw from it.

> Be afraid all you want, doesn't matter to me.

One of these things is not like the other.

Right, one is addressing a single person that's said they afraid of talking in public for fear of blowback and another is directed to the Bay Area and greater tech community asking them to engage the world.

What am I missing?

That the blowback from tech employees is a real thing which directly contributes to lack of dialog between people with different political opinions, and not caring about the individual while imploring the community at large to engage is a ridiculous and contradictory position.

A pair of riots in Berkeley within a month, San Jose during the election, the Brendan Eich situation, myriad letters from CEOs post election. To quote sama's recent post [1], "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried about getting “targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him”. One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter."

Care as much or little about the concerns of people not like you as you want, just don't act like you want to have a conversation with them too in the same breath.

1. http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters

There is no contraction, engaging the world, especially those that may not agree with you, is potentially dangerous and if you're afraid to do so, then don't.

> going out and engaging the world is potentially dangerous

Do you think this is reasonable in the context of expressing your support for the leader of your nation at your workplace? I certainly don't think so.

> I think people should collaborate but in a clandestine fashion.

The fact that people can't even meet to have a discussion is just simply wrong.

Without communication between parties almost nothing will happen.

If you want to keep the Internet open, you're going to have to push for ISPs as a public utility, like the roads are. A big government bureaucracy is better to handle this service, instead of profit-driven private companies, since government is far more efficient than private companies.

There is no way private companies are going to be able to keep the internet open for long. What's their incentive to keep it open? Assume they are against you, and deal with it from there.

And we should be using 40Gbps internet right now, enabling live low-latency video, but we can't because there's no competitive reason for local ISPs to upgrade.

I propose to organize and for 1 week limit bandwidth to all of our websites to 56k to FCC IP block. I believe it will send much stronger message than any other form of protests. Google, wikipedia, netflix, amazon, facebook, linkedin and everyone else join and show everyone where you stand.

I love this idea, but where do they all stand? Surely someone is paying the lobbyists - or is it only internet providers?

I hear you! I'm in the same boat, I shouldn't point fingers. I'll do what I can.

And when protesters who demand open internet start getting their access cut off, they'll start seeing the analogy. Too late then. :(