do something for the education
Here's one avenue for doing that:
https://www.donorschoose.org/
Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
201–210 of 394 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#202At Helpwith.co we're focussing on facilitating something that seems very simple and obvious, but is often very difficult to achieve: One person teaching another person what they know.
We believe that peer-to-peer, community driven, education is one of the best ways that our small team can meaningfully impact the world.
The more effectively we can disseminate meaningful information, while also building connections between people, the easier it becomes to solve every other world problem.
Always looking for more collaborators, so feel free to email me: John@helpwith.co
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#203Warning - strong opinions ahead: Provide services and tools without the strings attached. That is to say, provide email services that don't mine data for profit. Provide a social interaction space that doesn't attempt to manipulate moods, opinions, or sell its user's eyeballs. Provide an aggregation service with strong filtering tools in place of strong moderation. Provide a code repository with great tooling that do…
Is "Facebook without advertisements" really the bar for social good now?
In some way it is. One can't deny that social networking has pretty huge positive impact on communication and creative output. It would be better if it didn't come with surveillance capitalism in the same package.
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#204I have posted this before, countless times, but techies who want to volunteer their skills and knowledge to advance the democratic process should think about joining the PROGRESSIVE CODERS NETWORK[0]. They are a non-profit that helps organize and direct volunteer coders, programmers, designers into open-source political projects. They are about connecting and facilitating projects, not dictating what projects should…
Party neutral? They list MoveOn as a key partner: https://github.com/ProgressiveCoders/functions/issues/196 This document clearly states the organisation is founded by Berine Sanders supporters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P8iL3kTWO0Y9aYe8lndcUWTJ... And they built something called the "Resistance Calendar", containing events like: https://tockify.com/resistance.calendar/detail/384/149523120... I mean for the…
The non-profit is neutral because it will create applications for all party/political affiliation causes.
So it'll make an application that supports primarily republican causes too.
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#205Contribute to http://freecodecamp.com
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#206My opinion: take whatever idea you have for a great company, but make it a non-profit.
Other than maybe e-mail, wikipedia is the best thing to come out of the internet. And its creator may not be a billionaire oligarch, but he has a GREAT life. If you can set aside a need to be filthy, needlessly, pointlessly rich, then maybe turn your next idea for a social network or a communication platform or whatever into a non-profit. It's amazing what types of products can be built for this world when you're building for the world, and not the shareholders.
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are going to shit on the parent comment - but honestly, anyone with more than a few years of experience in a tight tech job market is going to easily be in the top decile of earners. The highly-committed individuals that do the brutally hard work on the ground for non-profits or NGOs make a pittance in comparison. Committing a quarter of your salary would pay the entirety of theirs. Consider that for a moment.
I'm suspicious of the notion that throwing money at problems can solve them.
To quote 'Eliezer, this is how adults solve problems. Professional specialization has huge leverage. If you can find a way to use your professional skills to help society, go ahead and do it. If you can't, it's more effective use of your time to leverage your professional skills into money, and then use that money to fund professionals helping society directly.
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm suspicious of the notion that throwing money at problems can solve them.
Agreed. Money can't buy everything, including experience and awareness gleaned from personally facing the problems such NGOs target. The knowledge accrued could demonstrate value later.
True, but you need to consider what you care about more - to have the problem solved, or to solve it yourself? Or to put it differently - do you care about increasing utility, or your own fuzzy feelings?
Either of those goals are good, but they're better done separately. See also: http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa....
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#209Work as a programmer for whoever will pay you the most. Invest, and donate money to causes you care about.
...Unless it's advetising. Or Uber. Or government wanting you to implement yet another freedom-restricting bullshit.
A better rule is: just don't take a job in which your negative impact on the society will be greater than the positive impact of the money you donate.
Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ummmmmm but Uber made the world a better place? (for me anyway)
Sorry, I said Uber a bit provocative. I meant companies doing unethical things and asking you to do unethical things.
Which Uber is definitely a good example of, but I agree it was a bit provocative :).