[Chapter-delegates] What should ISOC's future goals be? How can we work toward achieving them as ISOC Chapters?

[Alexander Blom]

Hi John,

Sure, a summary of a project we recently submitted twice (with some
changes) and was refused twice:

Project Summary:Like in many countries, disinformation in the online
political debate is rampant in the Netherlands. Politicians and journalists
alike are obsessed by the short term news cycle, reducing any news story to
a simple black and white affair without taking into account the nuances,
the history or their own involvement. This has manifested itself never more
strongly than in the scandal around child care benefits, the
"Toeslagenaffaire", which resulted in the extremely harsh treatment of some
2200 mostly immigrant familie by the tax authorities, a toppled government
and a post-election scandal. It is now subject of an upcoming parliamentary
inquiry, with preliminary investigations in the fall of 21, and public
hearings scheduled for spring '22.Together with the departments of
Philosophy and Dutch Studies from the University of Amsterdam, the ISOCNL
Critical Thinking Working Group (CTWG) will train a number of students and
journalists to discover and flag fake news stories and political statements
around the parliamentary inquiry. The result of their work will then be
brought to the attention of the public through a social media campaign,
using the very same channel where many get their (false) information.The
aim is to restore some faith in the internet as a trustworthy source of
information and at the same provide ISOC Chapers with a disinformation
toolbox to combat fake news in their own countries.
The comment I thought inappropriate: "while the application was extremely
well written and thought out, the issue is very politically complicated and
does not fit within the objectives of the program objectives and does not
align with ISOC and Foundation’s goals" Here the judge decides that the
subject of fake news should not be touched by SOC? Fake news is an
international concern, the subject of one of the new SIG's that were
just suggested and very much alive with many chapters. (a fellow board
member of mine was invited to speak at a meeting from the Benin Chapter,
expressly on this subject)

My problem with the refusals is that nobody seemed to consider the good
that would have come out of this project: closer ties between ISOCNL and
the University of Amsterdam, internationally available course material, a
social media campaign on fake news, a number of trained and somewhat
experienced annotators, a boost for ISOCNL in general etc. and all this for
just 30k. Instead, the judges were looking for what might go wrong: not
enough effect on the elections (for 30k, what were they expecting?), not
aligned with the US head office, starting a little later than expected etc,
all petty reasons in my opinion.

Especially when there are not enough chapter proposals to finish
the available budget, this seems foolish.

Anyone who wants to get full details on both projects can PM me.

Met vriendelijke groet,
Kind regards

Alexander Blom
CEO/owner

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Op ma 27 sep. 2021 om 21:30 schreef John Levine <isocmember at johnlevine.com>:

> It appears that Alexander Blom via Chapter-delegates <
> alexander.blom at budgetphone.nl> said:
> >
> >We seem to arrive at opposite conclusions, where you (and Andrew)
> attribute
> >the modest total amount of grant funding for chapters to the lack of
> >applications, and my chapters' experiences are the opposite, namely the
> >foundation steadfastly refusing our applications, one after the other.
>
> Could you give us some examples of projects for which you have applied
> for funding and the Foundation said no?
>
> R's,
> John
>
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