Ask HN: How can the tech community help during this crisis?
Other than donating funds or providing remote employment, how can the tech community at large help help here? We have a lot of compute power at our fingertips, and more importantly, knowledge that surely can be utilised to assist both Ukrainians and Russians who oppose the insanity or are in the dark as to what goes on?
(
4 comments
| 5 points
| on HN
)
Many IT-people have a bad case of "when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" moment recently. They try to block, attack, force their points. But the reality is that they won't be able to undo years of propaganda and inter-country tensions with a bunch of badly crafted and delivered messages and measures. Such attempts only make the situation worse.
And I highly doubt any additional sanctions beyond the ones against the government, propagandists, military and oligarchs will do what their implementers expect them to, baring being a moral high ground based self-promotion.
Donating, relocating, employing and providing situational awareness really helps but it addresses symptoms, not the illness itself.
So people like those protesting in Moscow could hand their phone to law enforcement who would unlock it with an alternative code that puts it in a "safe" mode showing different text messages, different signal account, etc.