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planet-nin · 6 months

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Say "NO" to Genocide - Call, email, mail your reps (Canada)

Me and my friend spent some time today writing letters to the House of Commons, plus we have been calling MPs daily. I haven't seen too many resources for this floating around on tumblr, so here's a lengthy guide on how to do this plus some sample scripts! Long post ahead since I think it will be most helpful to dump everything in one spot to reference. On desktop, use CTR F/CMD F to search for the topic -> Phone / Email / Letter Mail / Contacts / Demands / Scripts / Fax

Update 1 - Nov 23: Updated emails with "mailto" hyperlinks, edited demands, added fax section, added scotiabank pres fax number.

On the PHONE / General Tips

Introduce yourself and identify yourself as a constituent by providing your postal code or address.

Ask to speak to the MP directly, but do not be surprised if you must speak to the MP’s staff instead. Staff can help move your issue forward.

Give the reason for your call and explain your concern.

Focus on one or two main concerns per phone call. Do not unload on the MP or their staff with all of your political concerns at one time.

Ask clear and pointed questions that require some explanation.

Ask for a commitment to action.

KEEP IN MIND Tips for Calling MPs:

Tell the MP that this issue will matter to you in the next election.

Avoid revealing party affiliation or sympathies. If you show that your vote is already cast for a certain party, the MP may not have the incentive to respond to your requests.

Be as brief as possible while outlining concerns. Show that you respect their time.

Remain calm and respectful in dialogue. Be willing to work with them.

Follow up: Find out what actions were taken as a result of your call, and respond appropriately.

(Source: CPJ.ca)

CJPME Call Tool - Fill in the form, there will be suggested talking point. The tool will call your phone and then patch you through to your MP. If voicemail, state your concerns in 30 seconds. No address input will default you to call Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly.

Be sure you sign your email with your name and mailing address so they know you are a part of their riding.

You will most likely receive a PR-type response or no response at all, but please still send these. It disrupts operations, and it still contributes to pressuring your MP to act on behalf of your riding.

LETTER MAIL

Mail may be sent postage-free to any member of Parliament at the House of Commons address. You just need to use an MP's full title if they are Cabinet members. Cabinet mebers have "The Honourable" attached to their names.

Postcards are efficient in that they are small pieces of card stock and can be a short message plus demands, no need to get use envelopes.

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0A6

CONTACTS

Find your MP - ourcommons.ca - Contact the MP of your riding, any of the contacts below, as well as any cabinet members in your city or province.

Prime Minister (613) 992-4211 / [email protected] *FAX: 613-941-6900 /*If faxes are closed at the House of Commons line, try their local offices! (See below under "FAX" for fax guide!)

Deputy Prime Minister - Chrystia Freeland (613) 992-5254 / [email protected] FAX: 416-928-2377

Minister of Foreign Affairs - Mélanie Joly (613) 992-0983 / [email protected] FAX: 613-992-1932

Minister of International Development - Ahmed Hussein (613) 995-0777 / [email protected] FAX: 613-995-0777

Minister of National Defence - Bill Blair (416) 261-8613 / [email protected] FAX: 416-261-5286

Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group (CAIL) Stéphane Bergeron (*he's not a chair or vice chair of this group, but i want to warn that stephane WILL argue with you, so call after hours if you are scared of confrontation 😭☠️) (450) 922-2562 / [email protected] Anthony House-father (Chair) (514) 283-0171 / [email protected] Randall Garrison (VC) (250) 405-6550 / [email protected] Marty Morantz (VC) (204) 984-6432 / [email protected] The Honourable Ya’ara Saks (VC) (416) 638-3700 / [email protected]

Embassy of Israel (613)567-6450 / FAX: 613-750-7555

DEMANDS

Summarized from resistance groups such as H/mas, H/zbollah, PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), DFLP (Marxist Democratic Front got the Liberation of Palestine), CJPME (Canadians for justice and peace in the middle east), and other anti-war, anti-imperialist, IRL Palestinians.

Canada needs to...

Call an immediate PERMANENT ceasefire to end bloodshed

Send humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Institute embargo on all military exports to Israel

Close the embassies, and sanction Israel diplomatically and economically.

SCRIPTS

Use these as scripts for calling, emailing, and mailing. I suggest adding some of your own sentences and changing the subject lines (for email) so they don't end up in spam.

Example from Canada: Stop Arming Israel - World BEYOND War

As we mourn the thousands of people in Israel and Palestine who have been killed in the past few weeks we refuse to stand by and allow the only true winners in war — the weapons manufacturers — to continue to arm and profit off of it.

Canada exported over $21 million in military goods to Israel in 2022, including over $3 million in bombs, torpedoes, missiles, and other explosives. - 2022 Exports of Military Goods

Weapons companies across Canada are making a fortune off of the carnage in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine.

This is a call to action. It's time to stop letting these weapons companies profit off of the massacre of thousands of Palestinians. Find a location near you, get friends and allies together, and interrupt their business as usual to demand they stop selling arms and military technology to Israel.

Send an urgent message to demand Canada stop arming Israel and push for an immediate ceasefire to your Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister, and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, International Trade, and Defense.

Dear [recipient's full name goes here], We are witnessing genocidal violence playing out in Gaza right now. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, nearly half of them children. With a blockade on water, electricity, fuel and food, a quarter of all buildings razed to the ground, and over a million people displaced, UN experts have denounced Israel's actions as crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, weapons companies across Canada are arming -- and making a fortune off of -- the carnage in Gaza and the massacre of thousands of Palestinians by selling weapons and military technology to Israel. I am calling on you to do two things: to take immediate action to institute an arms embargo on Israel and to ensure Canada pushes for de-escalation and a ceasefire in Gaza. Sincerely,

Script Sample 2 from Palestinian Youth Movement

^This will open up a pre-written email in your chosen email app or site. Fill in the recipient line with the emails of MPs you wish to contact.

Script Sample 3 from CJPME's Email Campaign

^Complete the form to send an email to Prime Minister Trudeau, your local MP, and the leaders of the NDP, Convervatives and Greens. Canada must OPPOSE A SECOND NAKBA and dispossession of the Palestinians in Gaza by pushing for a ceasefire.

Script Sample 3 for mail:

(a mix of mine and a friend's)

I am writing to ask you to take immediate action to stop the genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza as well as the onslaught of those in West Bank.

There is blockade on food, water, electricity, fuel, and the use of internationally banned white phosphorus to exterminate Palestinians. Aid is not able to enter Gaza because of this blockade. UN experts have named Israel’s actions as genocide citing numerous war crimes they continually commit.

While over 10k civilians have been martyr’d (4.2k of which are children), Canada has not even been able to NAME such crimes as genocide or call for an official ceasefire. This is not enough.

Canada needs to:

Call an immediate ceasefire to end bloodshed

Send humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Institute embargo on all military exports to Israel

Close the embassies, and sanction Israel diplomatically and economically.

FAX (NEW!)

Using faxzero.com is simple, just follow up the steps on the website. No fax machine required! Tell officials your demands and customize your letter by noting their complicity based on their role as a politician or gov official. Or keep it brief and simple, in large legible letters.

Demands could include:

That you are a “Canadian” constituent That you are demanding an IMMEDIATE AND PERMANENT CEASEFIRE IN GAZA; That you demand a total withdrawal of financial (taxpayer) and commercial support and arms for continued occupation in Israel’s 70+ year occupation in Palestine; That it is shameful that [X] is choosing not to speak up for the deaths of more than 11,000 Palestinians, half of whom are children and thousands of others displaced; That Palestinians like all people, deserve life, dignity and justice; That Israel is breaking multiple international laws daily and Canada MUST meet its international commitment to promote and defend human rights under the Geneva Convention; That not putting these actions in place will harm constituents and undo acts of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities in Canada by not protecting the Indigenous peoples of Palestine; That unless there is concrete and everlasting action taken place, that there will be no peace until Palestine is free, and subsequently that you will not be voting for them (if applicable) in the next election.

Sign off with your name, address and postal code (if applicable, furthering that you are a resident on the stolen Indigenous lands otherwise known as “Canada”) Extended fax list: Scott thomson (president of scotiabank) - 416-866-5929 joe biden / whitehouse - 202-456-2461

(source: @/harlo.gif on IG)

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planet-nin · 10 months

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Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience.

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content.

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up.

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant.

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are.

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds.

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs.

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread.

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads.

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed.

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it.

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages.

Test what the right daily push notification limit is.

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users.

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

#all you guys had to do to win the race was NOTHING #did you not see the memes made honouring your past decision to do nothing #while the other bozos slipped and broke ass on the ice #I mean let's be real #we knew they'd pull something stupid #we love to pretend tumblr isn't corpo until they show us they are #repeatedly #and disrespect their userbase over and over again #not art

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