2025 - 2026 FACTORY student led: Genuinely tweaking

Squatter Computer Tinkering by Francis Belte. Credits/source: https://4e554c4c.xyz/

NOVEMBER 22, 2025 

Led by Moss Lutz, Dory Samuel, Hannah van der Schaaf, Sarmistha Bose, Fagner Lima Frias Da Silva

When: 17:15 - 19:15

Location: Big Library 

During the last assembly on Palestine we felt the need to discuss digital boycotting and digital security culture. After that, we want to check in with the crowd on what tools they would need, so that we want to give practical help to everyone to make real change in their digital daily routines.

As humans in this world are unfortunately programmed to be sheeps/NPCs :( We want to figure out what mechanisms lead to procastination and how we can work towards a more effective boycotting.

We also want to discuss security culture, maybe we can share the different tactics we use in our localities.
We can discuss for example which platforms we avoid for more sensitive topics and for which topics we put our devices away, how we put them away and why. There will be some zines (very short booklets) on this topic for everyone to take home.

After this we want to ask you all what your digital desires/needs are and we can see how we can help you achieve your goals. We might split off into smaller groups, depending on the diversity of the topics of interest.

We saw for example there's a lot of students who don't know how to get apps for free on their phone. We can show you all for example how to install free alternatives to spotify on android. Moss' got some experience installing various operating systems on their computers and phone, they can share the advantages and disadvantages if you are interested in that too. 

If we're not feeling bigger adjustments to our software, we can also show more small and simple tweaks that make life a lot easier. We noticed for example that not everyone has adblockers on their computer, so we can for sure help some of you to get a browser where you can add extensions. Probably there is many people who have this knowledge too, if you have this more basic knowledge it's still nice to come and help people out who don't have it! 

And about security, maybe we can figure out a way to test Ratri's tip of plugging in earplugs and playing music so our phones dont listen to us in the end :D

 

This student initiative is facilitated by DAI by making it part of the syllabus 2025-2026 and by providing space and time for gathering. It is embedded in the curriculum component WEAVER and participation is credited with ECTS.