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How we ran #SaveTheInternet for free

How we ran #SaveTheInternet for free

Back in April ’15, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a draft recommendation that threatened the fundamental openness and neutrality of the internet in India.
A few of us got together to try and raise awareness on this issue on Net Neutrality, and it ended up being one the biggest online movements in India in recent times.

We had over 1 million emails sent to TRAI in a span of just two weeks.

I was one of the people behind the movement, and helped build and design the website.

What is surprising, and relatively unknown, is that this entire campaign ran entirely for free. We used only free and open services to plan, coordinate and execute this movement.

This talk is about how we used such tools effectively, and my learnings on how relatively low tech solutions can have far reaching impacts.

Karthik Balakrishnan

November 01, 2015
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Transcript

  1. 27 March 2015 TRAI releases their paper 1 April 2015

    “We’re f*cked” - Nikhil Pahwa
  2. 27 March 2015 TRAI releases their paper 1 April 2015

    “We’re f*cked” - Nikhil Pahwa 11 April 2015 savetheinternet.in launches
  3. 27 March 2015 TRAI releases their paper 1 April 2015

    “We’re f*cked” - Nikhil Pahwa 11 April 2015 savetheinternet.in launches 22 April 2015 Rahul Gandhi makes a scene in Parliament
  4. TRAI asked 20 questions How hard can 20 answers be?

    Spoilers: Turns out, pretty hard.
  5. Mailgun? Mandrill? hand-rolled mail server? - SPIF/DKIM - Risk of

    becoming a Change.org campaign - Cannot prove authenticity
  6. Mailgun? Mandrill? hand-rolled mail server? - SPIF/DKIM - Risk of

    becoming a Change.org campaign - Cannot prove authenticity - Money?
  7. Attempt 1 - The mailto: hack - Encode everything in

    a giant mailto: link - GET request to the compose URL of Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail
  8. Attempt 1 - The mailto: hack - Encode everything in

    a giant mailto: link - GET request to the compose URL of Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail - FATAL: URL length limit
  9. Attempt 2 - ZeroClipboard.js - Flash hack to copy body

    to clipboard - Couple with mailto: encoding (minus body)
  10. Attempt 2 - ZeroClipboard.js - Flash hack to copy body

    to clipboard - Couple with mailto: encoding (minus body) - FATAL: Flash on mobile
  11. Attempt 3 - Semi-automatic - Step-by-step copy body to clipboard

    - mailto: link (minus body) - SUCCESS: though increased number of clicks
  12. Prevent spamming messages - Lawyers helped draft the answers -

    Randomly chose one from a list - Flat doc, easy to edit
  13. Completely static site - Styles and code inline, everything else

    on CDN - Easy to maintain and test - Grunt slowed us down tremendously - Ditched it after the first couple of hours
  14. Completely static site - Styles and code inline, everything else

    on CDN - Easy to maintain and test - Grunt slowed us down tremendously - Ditched it after the first couple of hours PR still not merged (sorry @SohamKamani)
  15. GitHub, no points for guessing - Easy to use online

    editor for answers - Lent authenticity - everyone in the campaign was a nobody - me included
  16. GitHub, no points for guessing - Easy to use online

    editor for answers - Lent authenticity - everyone in the campaign was a nobody - me included - Open review
  17. GitHub, no points for guessing - Easy to use online

    editor for answers - Lent authenticity - everyone in the campaign was a nobody - me included - Open review - Anyone could participate, and people did
  18. Heroku's free tier single dyno for hosting - Node.js app

    serving a static site - Amazing performance, not a single hiccup
  19. Heroku's free tier single dyno for hosting - Node.js app

    serving a static site - Amazing performance, not a single hiccup - Why Heroku?
  20. Heroku's free tier single dyno for hosting - Node.js app

    serving a static site - Amazing performance, not a single hiccup - Why Heroku? - Git deploys
  21. Heroku's free tier single dyno for hosting - Node.js app

    serving a static site - Amazing performance, not a single hiccup - Why Heroku? - Git deploys In hindsight, could have gotten away with GitHub Pages.
  22. Google form for issue tracking - Github Issues need you

    to sign up - We didn’t want to flood it
  23. Google form for issue tracking - Github Issues need you

    to sign up - We didn’t want to flood it - Easy to view issues in a spreadsheet
  24. Mission Control We just had everyone in a Slack team


    
 
 Nothing more to say other than Slack is amazing.
  25. Make a Gmail account BCC ourselves in every email, easy

    peasy
 
 
 What could go wrong?
  26. We thought we’d be lucky with 10k emails Nothing could

    have prepared us for 1 million
 
 

  27. The “techie” in me would have killed this campaign and

    that is sort of the “message” of this talk.
 
 

  28. Speed speed speed - Viral - You lose people every

    second - Planning would have resulted in over engineering
  29. Speed speed speed - Viral - You lose people every

    second - Planning would have resulted in over engineering - Reactive approach worked well (somewhat, lost some email :( )
  30. The tools are super accessible - All this was run

    entirely on free tools - Heroku, Gmail, Github, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube - all free
  31. The tools are super accessible - All this was run

    entirely on free tools - Heroku, Gmail, Github, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube - all free - Lack of resources aren’t an excuse anymore
  32. People are awesome - People from around the country -

    discussions, contributions, GIFs - Kids from Hyderabad emailed asking if they could use our logo for a poster

  33. People are awesome - People from around the country -

    discussions, contributions, GIFs - Kids from Hyderabad emailed asking if they could use our logo for a poster
 
 - Professor from a university offered to give us college resources for free
  34. People are awesome - People from around the country -

    discussions, contributions, GIFs - Kids from Hyderabad emailed asking if they could use our logo for a poster
 
 - Professor from a university offered to give us college resources for free This warrants its own talk, really.
  35. Large scale impact - We made national news within 48

    hours - Mark Zuckerberg responded in 72 hours
  36. Large scale impact - We made national news within 48

    hours - Mark Zuckerberg responded in 72 hours - International news in less than a week
  37. Large scale impact - We made national news within 48

    hours - Mark Zuckerberg responded in 72 hours - International news in less than a week - Flipkart backed out of Airtel Zero
  38. Large scale impact - We made national news within 48

    hours - Mark Zuckerberg responded in 72 hours - International news in less than a week - Flipkart backed out of Airtel Zero - Multiple companies exited Internet.org
  39. Multi-crore deals thwarted by a 22 year old college student

    who sometimes misspells Nuetrality 
 
 
 

  40. Multi-crore deals thwarted by a 22 year old college student

    who sometimes misspells Neutrality 
 
 
 

  41. Multi-crore deals thwarted by a 22 year old college student

    who sometimes misspells Neutrality 
 
 
 
 What a time to be alive.