Anonymity for a healthy democracy with Isabela Fernandes [Tor Projectl Executive Director]

Hi, my name is Isabella Fernandez. I'm the executive director at the Tor project. [Music] To is an open-source tool that can anonymize your traffic on the internet. So we have two components of this tool. One is a decentralized network and another one is a browser that helps you connect to that network and protects you.

So when you were using to and browsing the internet, nobody knows who you are and that's how we help people protect the privacy online. How I got involved with Thor? Well, I actually comes from the free software movement. I'm from Brazil and in the late 90s I got involved with it. So over the course of the years, of course, I learned about tour even before I worked for tour.

I knew it existed and I was installing to for people to use and protect the privacy online. For instance, I used to work for the Brazilian president presidential palace to migrate things to free software. And in 2006, I was installing to because in the presidency of a country people need privacy online. So I was installing to for the workers or the people who were working close to the president. Um fasting forward I move on with my life.

I moved to many jobs and eventually uh in 2015 to was hiring. So I applied for the job and I started working at the organization first as a project manager and three years later I took uh the executive director direction the executive director role of the nonprofit and I've been um governing the nonprofit since then. Um unfortunately one of the biggest misconception about Thor is that people often tend to call it oh Thor is the deep web or the dark web and actually when you look at the meaning of what is the dark web anyways uh people don't have a clear definition for it and I think this is kind of what the media a way the media meet that the media created to explain technology that they don't understand uh that it's uh extremely hurtful because when people tend to Think about such an important technology that is actually saving people's lives, protecting human rights um activists all around the world or just common people who wants a little bit more privacy online and you tell the world that this is the tool for bad things and only uh illegal criminal activities happening with that. You're criminalizing a tool without any like u yeah you're criminalize a tool that can be extremely important in the world that we live today. One other thing is the tendency of uh comparing an amidity with something illegal.

People in the media especially have the tendency to say oh if someone wants to be anonymous online it's because they want to do something uh wrong online. And I always call uh attention for that type of comparison because actually one of our pillars of the of democracy is anonymity is privacy. Your vote is anonymous for a reason. So we need anonymity to have a healthy democracy in the world. People need privacy in order to exercise the citizen rights.

And I'm not talking citizen as someone was born in a country. I'm talking about citizen right as someone who lives in a society and wants to either form an opinion have curiosity or dislike something and that provides the privacy that people need to exercise their rights in a democratic society. So I think those misconceptions are very problematic because you're criminalizing the essence elements that build or democracies that build on the top of it. And when you criminalizing that, when people don't give value to that, it's very easy for you to attack democracy and uh yeah and to build authoritarian regimes and other things that can uh repress people instead of uh providing them with uh freedom and u yeah like a place in society where they can exercise their rights uh with u security. Well, I go back to the human rights, right?

Like privacy is a human rights is a universal declaration of human rights. So whatever concept you have of what democracy is on your country and what people believe that this element of privacy should be part of it, right? Like should be part of that um concept. I think it's really hard for you to claim that you're building a democratic society when you're not respecting human rights spirit and if you're not respect respecting privacy as part of that uh collection of rights that we all as humans have and have the right right like this is a universal declaration that multiple countries have signed it you are not really um building right like for maintain a space to be democratic. I think that's uh no matter what right like concept you have about what democracy is if we go to the roots of what are the human rights that we all leaves on depends on right like to guarantee others as humans dignity and life in society privacy is part of that.

So if you are building a democracy, if you claim to have a democracy and you're not counting that as part of your uh dem democratic state then you're definitely um lying to people or right like misguiding people in that matter and uh I think uh no matter what is your definition if you go back to the roots privacy is a human rights and should be respected and defended universally. What is the best approach to get people to understand privacy is important? I think the best strategy is to meet people at the right moment, right? Like if you're coming to someone and it's not the right moment to make that connection, bring that up, it's u it's probably not going to sink in, right? Like so I always like to bring this when it's the right moment.

And you have those moments all the time. For instance, you might be with your family and then someone makes a comment. Oh, the other day I was talking about bikes and now I see ads about bikes everywhere on my phone. Da da da. And then that's the moment, right?

Like that's the moment you say, well, is there a way for you uh to be online where this kind of things like your interest is not going to become advertising that will follow you everywhere, right? Like and you can explain to people that it's as simple as any other browser. It's not a hacker tool, right? Like it's a fork or Firefox. So it's going to work just like any other browser.

And actually as a matter of fact we have a lot of use cases inside of to like that of people who use the store that I love to always mention because the spectrum is very broad. People think that like oh toy is a tool for people who really needs to protect themselves and actually no. We have people who used to for instance a father of teenagers. Teenagers are in a fight a phase of life that can be terrible. They have 20,000 questions about drugs, about sex.

And of course, they will go to the internet to search about those topics. And this father educate his kids to use store to do that on tour. Why? Because they're young. And if they don't use something that we protect their privacy online, those questions, those interests might follow them for the rest of their lives online.

might be data that is aggregated to their persona to who they are online and follow them for the rest of their lives. We have doctors for instance who use store to search about the patients because they care about right the patients privacy. They don't want that search to be associated with the case that they're treating. So we have like a huge spectrum of people who goes to tour just because at that moment at the particular moment they would like to have that information to be private. I was saying that to might not be a tool that you use every single day all the time.

As a matter of fact we did a research with our users and most of them you store a few times a day or a few times a week and for me that makes totally sense. It is what is important is when the person understands that like what I'm doing online can be associated with me and that can be anything that can be a teenager's question right can be a patient that you're searching information and when people knows and understand that those uh that data that's being generated can be associated with you and probably for the rest of your life because the internet doesn't forget forget we people will want to protect themselves. So what is missing is for them to understand what to do what to use. So I always tell people with this browser whenever you have that moment you can easily open and use it right like and you can protect yourself. It's all about meeting the people at the right moment, right?

Like I can it's really hard if I go around I don't know in the streets here we are in Berlin in the streets in Ber saying you need privacy online you know like the internet's collecting your data maybe one out of 10 people will stop and listen because I'm passing by they are not thinking about I'm not meeting them in the right moment but that's the that's the that's the key of it right like you need to meet people in the right moment and people will have different reasons You should not assume that everybody has the same reason. Everybody has the same need. Everybody wants to be to protect the privacy at all the times. Sometimes people will uh be okay with sharing some data, right? Like it might be part of uh the experience that they are having with the tool and they will be okay with that.

So you need to meet people at the moment they are at and there's two things, right? like meet people at the moment at that and build tools that are simple and easy to use for them to know they exist that they can shift to those tools whenever they want to shift to it. Sometimes um that is a moment of need right like a uh of a unexpected need that occurs and that can be when something like a country censors or blocks an app or a website like like I'm from Brazil Brazil from time to time we see we block WhatsApp we block Twitter it's not a long block it's a temporary block but at those moments where people are like okay how do I access this why do I access Twitter how do I access WhatsApp? And that is where you shows up with the tool that can help them, right? Like and you teach them, okay, you can be using this tool because on the top of allowing you to access something that is censored, it does not collect your data.

So nobody will know that you're using this tool to do that. So there is another layer of protection. Sometimes people are living their lives and maybe they believe they are in the greatest country of the world and then you have a new president like in the United States right now that is attacking every single individual in every way and with the big tech behind it that's supporting it and this is all connected right like the data that you are generating on those tools that are being fed into monitoring system that use it by the police. So your whole world comes to upside down. You believe you are in this country where it's protecting your rights.

It's pro democracy is protected. And then there is a new administration with a new mindset that is breaking off the rules who are really not caring about people's rights and then you see yourself as a target audience. You see yourself maybe uh even before Trump when abortion was legal in the United States and that was a Supreme Court order that make it legal in most states it start to become a trend and then you see yourself either as a provider or someone who needs abortion and you are worried right like uh there were people who were arrested because they were talking on Facebook chat a mother and a daughter about abortion and they got arrested by that so you see yourself in this situation where you would not think you would ever be and you need to learn a little bit more about protecting your data online and uh it can be overwhelming. People might think like oh my god what am I going to do and that's where we come in and that's where we come in with very easy tools to simplify that to people and show that it is possible to protect your activity online and doesn't need to be overwhelming. It can be just like your normal experience when you're browsing the internet without tour.

It can be just like that. It can be as simple as any other browser that you have a user in your lifetime. Yeah. Like I said, so integration, right? Like of this movement with all the movements, old generations with the new generations, right?

Uh as I said, I come from the free software movement from the late 90s when the internet was just starting, right? like free software was booming. Uh and we want that, right? Like I tend to joke to say that my introduction to free software was out of necessity. A lot of the things I wanted to do in a computer, I could not do it because I didn't have the money to buy the software to do it or even my computer was too old to actually work to do it.

And with Linux, I could use old hardware. I could do sophisticated things on the computer that I would never be able to do and that's how I taught myself a lot about technology and uh during that time we were builders right like we were building a lot of solutions to social movement to people uh to adopt technology like technology was just started internet was just started there was no cell phones I'm talking about a moment right like where uh these movements were very far away from technology and we were bringing technology to them. I think over the course of the years what end up happening with big tech especially is that of course the social movements continues there but um they end up giving away giving out to that technology instead of uh the ones that we were providing for different reasons right like hardware itself changed over time things that we were doing in a computer became a phone so a lot of the things that you were doing on the phone uh all these apps aggregate they are part of the big tech right like they come for free on your phone so it's very convenient and they adopt the technology but they adopt the wrong type of technology let's say to do the work to do the mobilization that they're doing right like to spread the word to put it out on the internet the campaigns and the work that they're doing so I think uh um that was one thing with the us as social movement right like us as the people building free software to other types of technology and trying to get social movements to adopt them. And then over time, social movements start to adopt technology, but we were not big enough or or could uh keep the pace with what was happening and they end up adopting the big technology. Bring on the movement about digital rights.

I also saw a tendency um of the new people rights with the whole other rights to do so but like looking more about regulation and legis legislation and try to control big tech towards it. I think right now what we need is uh aggregation on all of that. Uh I think uh we need every time we talking about digital rights that we are having an event like this or conversations like this we need to have instal fast together with it. We need to show people the technology that is the the alternative technology they can be using and I'm not talking about I'm talking about every type of technology on everybody's daytoday life. If you use, let's say, Uber to call a car, like to give you a lift, you should be able to use an equivalent of Uber, but it's owned by a co-op where the workers are actually making better money and your data is not being sold, right, like to third parties, etc.

So, you should be able to have that alternative. So, I believe that we need to have Yes. We need to have the people fighting for digital rights on the regulation side. We need to have uh the builders together with that fight and the movement, the grassroots movement, the social movements be integrated on it. And uh I will be talking more about this, but I'm calling this digital disobedience.

Just like when you have civil disobedience where people block a street to protest and call attention, every time that you are picking an alternative technology that is not part of the big tech, you promoting digital disobedience. And I think we need to keep promoting that and scaling that to a level where we will uh just like civil disobedience, right? Like you might start with a small road blockade and eventually you might get like hundreds of people to support you to support your cows and you can make a big disruption that actually will change the system. So I think we need to do that. It is a slow work.

It means that you need to go to the small uh group. I'm talking about municipal levels, right? Like I'm talking about community levels and not segregating anyways, right? Like you need to be start of public schools. You need to be talking with health uh public health care workers.

You need to be talking with co-ops. There are plenty of examples from social movements where people have created alternative ways of organizing business is sustainability for those communities. why that is not like uh marrying with the alternative tech that we're building right like so I think we need that and uh I'm very excited because right now in Brazil there is a movement like this happening with over 200 organizations part of it and uh for me the differentiator of that movement exactly right when you look at the working groups that you can associate and help out the movement it has all of it right like it has the people talking about policy It has the people building the alternative attack tech. It has people from social movements who now has a inside of the movement a tech collective like a group of people who thinks about the technology for the movement who are also building alternative tech. So it also have people who are doing the traditional civil disobedience and direct actions right like so it's actually aggregating people from different fronts.

is not just like the policy people or just the uh technology builders right like it is aggregating everybody on this mission because I think what people are realizing and this is very much clear if it wasn't clear before when you saw Trump inauguration all the big CEOs at that inauguration if you haven't got it before now is the time to get it right like they are associated that this power is even bigger and stronger than governments. They have more money than a whole country's GDP. So that is an association. So if you are fighting for a better word, we are fighting for any right like human rights or you're fighting for climate justice. If you are in this struggle, you have a layer related to technology that is part of your struggle.

So it is really hard to deassociate the fight for a better world with the fight for a better technology for us to use in this world. So we need to bring all together this right now it would be digital disobedience. It would be an act of resistance but also it is at the same time an act to build the world that we want. We want the world with technology. It's not just about oh technology is bad then we should you know like eliminate technology.

We need technology. Technology can be really good for us, but we want a technology that is for us, builded by us and for us, right? like we don't want a technology that is on the interest of a handful uh like CEOs, billionaires who don't care about human rights, who doesn't care about uh democracies and who are just wanted to increase the power and on the on the top of everything else on the cause of everything else related to the people who are suffering because of what they're doing be it because of the tech they're building be it because of the process of the tech that they're building be it because of the power that the tech they're building is giving to them that most of the time is even more powerful than governments of big countries uh that exist and that picture at the inauguration show it right like show it that they are not here just to make money they're here for power and they will play whatever game it is in order to gain that interest so in the world that we are today if you are in this fight no matter what is the area that you're fighting We need like you know and we know that technology is part of that. We need to have technology for the resistance but we also need to build technology for the new world that we want. We need to provide examples of how that can be possible.

How you don't need a monopoly a big organization with trillions of dollars to provide you an email service. You can have small business local business offering you the same quality of service as a big corporation. And that's that's the education that we need to provide during this process as well. I know. I think uh so what I think about uh crypto as cryptography right like the technology but also uh crypto as a currency right like uh in this uh in the propos uh new projects are bringing like the uh community the zcash community the monero community um so one thing I feel that um cryptography like encryption is extremely important for us moving forward and I think this community uh I always joke that maybe the to network is the older cousins of the blockchain network in a way uh I think uh it's it comes from a very similar uh vision right like uh where cryptography will and decentralization can be very robust infrastructure that you can trust and that is super powerful because normally when you think about infrastructure there is someone controlling that infrastructure right like and there's a lot of power on one person hand so um and this can be used for multiple things and I think sometimes people miss the point of that uh there's a lot of uh uh idea that like oh blockchain is just about money for instance which is not um when I tell people that the universal healthcare system in Brazil uses Blockchain people are like wait a healthare system using blockchain is fantastic.

It's amazing to store information. Of course this information is encrypted but it's a way to preserve the record the medical records of people right like uh it's extremely important and it is open source. it is uh infrastructure that a country like Brazil can easily build on the top of but then you also have uh the use case for financial transaction right like and I think it gives a different type of freedom because you can rethink that relationship you can rethink what is monetary transactions anyways right like what this comes from maybe you can go to the source of it the origins of it right like uh with for sustainability for exchange of goods foods and for people to actually um do that, right? Like uh in the old days, I would change my car for goods, but like how I actually would find that one person that has all the goods I want. I want, you know, like uh leather, I want milk, I want eggs, like I would not find a merchant that has all of it.

And that's where Kissy comes into play, right? Like it comes into play. Okay, here's my call. I get the currency and with this currency I go to the individual merchants that has all the goods I'm looking for and I can buy them separated right like so it was a matter of exchange sustainability was not a matter it was not uh I think for speculation I think for uh what you see banks right like banks make money right like so you see how capitalism builded a bunch of structures on the top of that that at the end of the day doesn't benefit society as much right like uh and actually create a lot of problems for society and when you have this control and decentralization for instance you have countries who can sanction on the countries and then this they are um locked out of the financial world so I feel that cryptocurrencies can bring control back to the people uh in order to build economies to build relationships that is independent of the normal currency of the fiat currencies that right now is controlled by decentralized powerful models right like that can easily give or take anytime they want uh just like with sanctions right like uh and um it's very powerful I feel that a lot of people don't see Um, just like when the media talks about Thor in the dark web, the media always try to paint cryptocrises as something obscure or hard or something that is probably related to some scam or some illegal scam or some scam to try to get rich fast. Why?

Because they're bringing examples of the financial monetary system that they know. They cannot see that this technology can build different relationships of economy in the world and uh they are blinded right like by the the system around them that they are familiar with and they try to compare this new technology with that what they're familiar with and that's the huge mistake that they have I think um that's what with uh the I just to give some examples right like In Brazil we have had ice for a long time communities where they have their own currency local currency not the country currency and they created ways to generate some uh values to store that with not technical at all most of these right like it's very old tech actually not like high-tech nothing fintech I'm not I'm not even talking about this is about a time before crypto crisis existed. So there's always be a need for it, right? Like there's always be a need where a economy need needs to happen in a community and maybe this is an isolated community, maybe this is a community that is extremely poor and they will not have access to fiat currencies, but they need to have a currency to move that economy inside of their own community. So this is where I feel like cryptocurrency can be extremely powerful because right now with the technology that we have with phones right like we can easily adapt to it and we can easily use it on situations like that.

So again, right like I I can see that encryption can build you can use encryption to build tools that sometimes you would not even imagine it would be use it for certain use cases like I don't think the people who start with blockchains and start developing blockchains ever thought that a blockchain would be used for a universal health care system in a country right like u but why those tools are super powerful is because of decentralization and encryption. Those are the two main uh characterist from other things that out there that people are offering as solutions, right? And uh I feel that we need to embrace it. We should we should not be afraid of it. We should actually embrace it and we should simplify it, right?

Like we should make it easier for people to use and use it on the day-to-day lives. uh if you see a lot of potential with cryptocurrency should be that there's a lot of simplification that are happen for people to be able to use it on the day-to-day uh activities uh people who are not super familiar with tech and now we see the normal tech right like let's say let's call it big tag normal tech catching up with it right we see the pay wallets coming in and other things coming in as well so it's becoming more and more familiar for people to use your phone to pay something. So it will be super easy for them to eventually move away from the fiat currency if they want to to another currency that can enable different economic systems, different uh relationship of transactions from the dependencies that we have from the ones that we have in society today. I feel like for instance I would the technology I'm using on my phone on my daytoday life it's I can identify who actually created right like especially if it's free software if I build a solution for let's say a delivery app that solution can be owned by multiple co co-ops in different cities so in my city I would have a co-op who is running that service to the city right like I also I think uh decentralized that technology like Thor or blockchain they for you to contribute to this decentralization right now you need to run a server the server needs to be on data center it's going to be as easy as pressing a button on your phone because your phone is a super powerful computer and should be part of that node so the decentralization will be bigger and uh it would be easier for people to collaborate and to support this public digital public infrastructure that we all would be using it. The business model would not be your data.

The business model would be either right like the service that you're providing and the because there is no monopoly happening and everything um the sustainability of the service and of the people behind of making this tool will be focused on collaboration. You only can make that word possible if the software is not proprietary. For instance, if the software can be shared by other business so they can also created a version of it locally. Uh I think um also there would be a huge care around data protection. people would pass the trauma that we are living today and they will remember the history and for them would be a huge absurd that you like for whatever reason you need to give out your data right like you need to accept or reject cookies.

This would be spoken as you know like a barbarian thing from the past that people will refer to it and be like how could humanity accept that? How could we be uh okay with this type of things, right? Like the same way today we look at slavery and we say how human humanity could be okay with slavery and took hundreds of centuries for people to fight back and stop slavery and that is still some slavery that occurs around the world, right? Like but yet we move away as society from that mentality, right? like uh uh a lot of people don't make this association but capitalism spread around the world because of slavery.

It was only possible to this idea this model to spread around the world because there was century of that model exploring people enslaving people. So we we've been out of it. Of course there's still a lot of things to fix. But if you ask me 30 years from now about technology, those would be the common sense uh that people will have when they're relating to technology, they will know the apps on their phone. They're not owned by a CEO dude in Silicon Valley.

The app on the phone is owned by the co-op downtown that I know. I pass in front of the office all the time. Uh what I'm doing, right? like the internet provider from my neighborhood is actually from my neighborhood is not like a big uh international company. Uh and because it's owned by multiple local business internet provider business data center would also be dis um decentralized in a way right like owned and accessible by multiple people by those co-ops who are building services.

I think uh also another there would be a better notion in relationship to hardware and where we going with hardware. Uh right now we went from a phase where we had control and we could repair things. Now people has a we need to have a movement for the right to repair. How crazy that is, right? Like I cannot repair my refrigerator.

Like before I could get the refrigerator like do like a a manual and be able to repair. Now I cannot do that like even if I have the manual I depend on the pieces because they are controlling by this corporation and if I want to buy the pieces to repair my refrigerator I need to pay a fee to the corporation to be able to do it. So the more and more they're locking things in and this is not sustainable. It's not sustainable for the world but the planet. So I think in this 30 years right like journey towards this future people will We will go through traumas that will make us realize the importance of those things, right?

Like the importance of going back to local. The importance of repairing hardware or maintaining hardware for a longer period of time to not become obsolete like in a year you need to buy the new iPhone or anything like that. And people will look back into the situation we are living today and think of us ourselves in the past, right? Like as crazy people. How can we have imagined that this was sustainable for us for democracy and for the planet?

So um yeah I think like in the world like technology will be for us will be serving us will be controller to us and the economy will be better. I tell you people have a lot of things to say about innovation and economy and the business model. Actually with free software there's a lot of innovation. In the matter of fact most of the technology used in today was only possible because of free software. If it was proprietary software would be a crazy competition and nothing would evolve and be innovated.

Um people think that the only way of being on the industry is if you are creating a startup that eventually will be bought by millions of dollars. No, people want sustainability. People want moms and pops business as well on technology. They want that. They want something that goes in generations and generations and they're keeping the service or whatever they're doing for the community, right?

Like for the people around them. And I think we can go back to it, right? like is I I try to to also give an example um maybe it will not work here in Europe but works very well in the United States where you only have two or three types ofarmacies right you have CVS you have WGER and whatever and that's it and that's crazy for me that's crazy because I grew up with my neighborhood pharmacy the pharmacist of my neighborhood she knows us she would stitch our hands when we would like foul play on the streets as kids you She knew my family medical history because she's my local pharmacy. It's her business. She's not like in a franchise or anything, right?

Like it's her local business. Same thing with market, supermarket or even close. We used to be like that. And now all of these are being eaten by those big monopolies and you lose that, right? like you lose the idea that yes, a pharmacy can be owned by your neighbor and can be their local their business for the community.

It doesn't need to be Walgreens or CVS. Doesn't need to have that brand and will serve you much better than the big brands ones. So I think like the same thing goes for technology and I hope that in 30 years from now I will be opening my phone and looking at the apps and identifying those apps as apps that I know who is behind it in a in the good sense not in the sense of like oh I know who is behind it because it's one of the richest person in the world that I'm looking on television every day. No I know who is behind it because that person is part of my community. they right like they're part of my life in every aspect of it right like they're not far away trying to create solutions for my um for my context that they have no idea what it is they're super disconnected from it right like so I think that uh in 30 years from now that would be the server side the infrastructure side would be something super simple for people to contribute uh and collaborate right like I said it should be to have a node in a blockchain network or a node that's part of the to network.

It should be as easy as pressing a button on your phone and you're contributing bandwidth to the network right away and that would be super powerful uh infrastructure that we can rely on from the public goods that we using. I hope it's right how I stay optimistic. Um I think first of all in Brazilian we are terrible people. We never give up. We always like on the fight to the end you know like so that is that.

Um but I feel like uh it's the minimum we can do right like uh I think that like no matter how hard the fight might look like we own the people before us and the people who come after us to keep doing it right like the le the least that we can do is to maintain this gate open right like for those who are coming after us to keep the fight going maybe the things I'm fighting for I might I might not see on my lifetime But it's impossible for me to give up on that fight because I think about the people who will come after me, right? Like I need to give them a foundation. My history in context of Brazil. Uh I had the people who came before me. I always joke that like I'm older than Brazil democracy.

So or like the normal in Brazil is one coupe after the other, military coupe after the other. But we are in a democratic process right now. So who gave their lives? Who devoted their lives to bring this right to vote for our president for instance in my country? I I know these people.

They are 75 years old today. They are alive. They around me. So I own them, right? Like I own them to not give up.

I own them to maintain that hope and to maintain the fight. And then when I look to the people younger than me, right? like my nephews and my people around my family. I want them to have the same feeling to pick up what I'm leaving to continue that fight. And I don't think it's impossible.

I think like people I always bring the slavery struggle as an example because those are centuries of fight. That's not like imagine you in that fight. Imagine that's your fight. Imagine you are slavered. you kidnap and move it to another country where you don't understand the language and you force it to labor in the most humane conditions and that's your fight.

Would you give up? Would you just give up and leave that condition? You would be revolted by it. You would be fighting and even though your generation didn't brought solution to that problem, you will keep that fire up for the next generations. And this is valid for everything, right?

like it's valid for the world that we're living today and for the young people I tell you don't feel uh despair I think the best thing that a young person today could do is to not accept the technology as it is do not accept what is being offered to you as it is try to rethink that try to look into it and think about like okay this could be different what can be different and support it I mean you don't need to know how to write code you know like you just need to be curious and support the projects who are doing that right like and support the projects who are building that uh different type of technology uh to the people. Um and the only fight you lose is the one that you give up on fighting. So if you don't give up on fighting, you're not going to lose this fight. It might take a little bit but you still are capable. And I have hope because in my lifetime I have lived at conditions where I I tend to joke where like all the stars was aligned because I lived in a moment in Latin America in Brazil in the early 2000s where the federal government was pushing for free software and the money they were not spending on Microsoft they were giving back to the community with events for people to share knowledge.

Uh that knowledge was accessible by everyone. That knowledge was inside of the universities in the academia but also was in the private business was in the public sector. We were building free software that we call it public software. We created actually like ripple call it public software where people could download the code and use that code. And that from that created like a incentive for creativity, for development, for innovation inside of a country where all we were doing was to download the new version of Windows and that's it, you know, like super dependent on that.

So it was an amazing time. It didn't last forever, right? Like but you could you could see it, you could touch it and you can see it is possible. So if it was possible back then is still possible today. And I think uh people especially new generations they they are still leave learning how to what it is what it means to live a decade.

What is the weight of a decade right? Like how much can change in a decade. So they expect change to become something faster to come faster to have a an effect on their lives quicker and it is not about that. I think if you expecting I always say like if you're expecting to collect your chips right like when you go to Vegas or like a casino that you're playing and you're expecting to collect your chips at the end of the night you are in the you you're not in the right game. You're probably not going to collect your ship chips at the end of the night.

But it's important that you play the game. It's important that you're part of this fight part of the struggle and shows um what is possible, right? Like what is possible for us to do? what is uh the world that is possible for us to build and uh more than anything come together as community right like we don't need to agree on everything but we need to work together to build something better that's what is important so don't jump into it with this excitement about like oh when I'm going to see it when I'm going to have it be happy with what you are building step by step even if it takes time be happy with that because Over time things grow. When Tori started when Tori started it was an email sent by the founder saying hey I had this code would you run this node and be part of this network and today and next year is going to be 20 years old.

Today we have thousands of people collaborating with this network. We have millions of users right? Imagine if people who started the tour code and sharing that email list is wanted that result in the first two or three years and haven't give up because it didn't sell that result in the first two or three years. Now today in the world that we live on a tool that can anonymize your traffic online it's gold. It's essentially if it's a free tool, it is a free software is decentralized, right?

Like there is no hidden uh mission or hidden um value that wants to aggregate out of it, right? Like our mission is to advent human rights with our technology. And when we start this project, when this project gets got started, there was just a handful of people running servers, running the nodes who are part of this network. 20 years later, we have millions of people, right? like losing our technology we have made it better and easier for people to use it.

So it is a progress. It's a process. It's not something that you what are you doing today? You might think, "Oh, but nobody like I only have I don't know 10,000 user. I only have a 100 users.

Maybe this is not meaningful." That's not the point, right? Like the point is that you are building an alternative that others can appropriate and use it for the good. So eventually this is going to be taken, right? like especially if we invest on breaking bubbles and connect with each other in different fronts and uh so be patient right like I think one of the things that we also in this resistance people in the resistance says a lot and they mention a lot is patience is our best weapon having patience having patience with the process having patience with the people who does not get it yet because most like all these people they're not your enemy.

They just don't get it. So having patience with them so you can bring in them to this movement. So our best weapon is patience and I think uh with patience and steady work right focus on that mission we are capable of making change. [Music]