Hacktivism – AustinH

Mass media, in the traditional sense, is a negative spiral. Mainstream news outlets are overwhelmingly concerned with malice and misfortune on all scales. While in all fairness, comforting stories of kindness aren’t exceedingly rare nowadays, you would still be hard pressed to turn on a TV to any news station and encounter something that isn’t highlighting strife in the world today. The same applies to the internet, perhaps even more so, with countless more avenues for this information, including the users themselves. Everyone has a voice online and many of them choose to use it to proliferate the same negativity and/or at least respond to it.

I propose that there is just as much goodness in the world – if not more – as there is negativity. It simply doesn’t get the screen time or the number of reports or posts that the conflicts get. But I think we really need to hear those good stories more often in life. On the other hand, we all experience these good things from time to time, but sometimes for some unknown reason we may just not feel the need to share it as a story with anyone else. That’s where my project comes in.

The Samaritan’s Journal is a public non-profit blog that enlists any number of vetted volunteers to edit and share stories of acts of kindness from around the world. Acts can be either given, received, or just observed. All that matters is that there is an organized outlet for these kinds of heart-warming stories as submitted by anyone and everyone with access. The only catch is: no real names can be involved. No credit will be given or asked for in describing any submitted scenario. There is only the act of kindness itself and comfort in the knowledge that it is made known, giving way to more acts like it in the future.

As such, with the exception of administrator accounts distributed by the owner to volunteers, no accounts would be needed or offered at any point. Post submission, which can include accompanying photos/video/audio, is purely anonymous, requiring only the content itself and a captcha to validate humanity. The submitted forms are then emailed to administrators for spelling and grammatical editing and posted to the site.

I considered the idea of making the posting process automatic and open, with no need for confirmation from a middle-man site admin, but unfortunately if any program or service online gains traction, it will inevitably gain digital hecklers in the form of trolls and attacks looking to just be contrarian to the target’s purpose. The vetting process through volunteer admins, acting as sort of filters for proper positive content, should help mitigate this kind of action by virtue of just being in place.