John,

I’m going to be upfront and let you know that this is an email where I’m going to ask you to make a monthly donation to Fight for the Future to help defend your rights in the digital age.

Here’s the TL;DR (“Too Long; Didn’t Read”): if you support our work fighting for Internet access for all, defending free speech online, opposing the monopolistic business practices of Facebook, Google, Amazon, et. al., stopping invasive surveillance by governments and corporations, working to ensure that decentralized tech has the opportunity to be an antidote to all of the above, and all the other efforts we champion, then please start a monthly gift, in any amount, to support and be a part of all this work.

Here’s the longer version:

Our fiscal year is coming to a close at the end of the month, and we’re behind in our grassroots fundraising. Over the past year-plus, a number of our monthly donors have had to cancel their gifts, many because of the pandemic. We totally understand this and are so thankful for everything that all of our members do to make Fight’s work possible.

But to be real, it has put us behind, and we’re looking at closing out our year in a deficit.

But as I’m sure you know, there is no deficit to the fights on our plate:

Biden still hasn’t appointed a fifth commissioner to the FCC, and we can’t win back net neutrality until he does. We need to push the administration to appoint a champion and get that person to fast-track the restoration of net neutrality.
Members of Congress just reintroduced the federal bill to ban facial recognition. This is a huge opportunity to build up bipartisan support for this bill so we can stop government and law enforcement use of this biased surveillance technology.
Apple’s App Store has created a choke point that governments use to censor political dissidents or discriminate against vulnerable people. It is also further empowering Big Tech companies at the expense of small businesses and human rights. We need to stop Apple’s censorship by forcing the company to allow people to install whatever apps they want on the phones that they own.
Amazon continues to expand its surveillance empire, putting workers, Black and brown communities, and every neighborhood with Ring cameras in constant danger. This company is a behemoth, but recent actions to extend its moratorium on selling facial recognition to police and to require more transparency into how cops access Ring doorbell footage, though not nearly good enough, show that our grassroots organizing is working. We’ve got to keep it up and ramp up pressure on the company to put an end to Amazon’s surveillance-powered police state.
In response to COVID-19, schools across the country adopted invasive proctoring apps that discriminate against disabled students and students of color and force students to give up access to way too much of their personal information. Despite many colleges going back to in-person learning, schools are continuing to use this technology. We have to put an end to this and ban e-proctoring.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which essentially allows ordinary people to have a voice on the Internet) continues to be a ticking time bomb, with numerous legislative attacks that would do enormous harm to vulnerable communities, undermine human rights, and utterly fail to address the legitimate problems with Big Tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google. Fight for the Future has spoken out actively against bad legislation, while also working to support legislation on algorithmic justice that could help address Big Tech issues. We cannot afford to let up on this—the future of the Internet depends on it.
Congress is itching to take action on cryptocurrencies, and without more education and advocacy their misunderstanding of the technology could result in terrible policy that cripples the development of decentralized tech instead of allowing it to be a powerful alternative to Big Tech and Big Banks. We need to ramp up our work on crypto, but can’t do it without your support.

That’s a lot—and it’s not everything. From continuing to fight copyright maximalists that want to censor content online and keep other countries from accessing COVID-19 vaccines to pushing retailers to ban the use of facial recognition, there are countless other campaigns and urgent issues that we need to be ready to jump on at a moment's notice.

That is where monthly donors can have such a huge impact. Monthly support allows us to budget for these ongoing fights while also knowing we have the sustained resources to jump on rapid-response campaigns when they come up.

Our monthly donors are a critical part of the Fight for the Future team and all of our victories. So if you can, please consider starting a monthly donation now. You’ll help make up our fundraising deficit now, and ensure we can continue to work on these critical issues and others as they arise. And as a gift to monthly donors we’ll send you a Fight for the Future baseball cap :)

DONATE MONTHLY

Thanks in advance for all of your support (whether you’re able to give or not).

Together,

Caitlin and the team at ❤️Fight

Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.