The information diet of the average tech worker these days consists mostly of mild, boring, possibly AI-generated, unappetizing grass. It’s time to add some spicy flavors to the mix.

This database collects digital spaces where tech workers congregate online. These spaces are gathering all kinds of tech workers, from freshly graduated, naive developers with no clue about the outside world to tech workers already politicized planning and scheming how to build a stronger union.

The goal is to enable the broader tech workers movement to be more structured, systematic, and intentional in reaching existing communities, digital spaces, and media outlets to promote their work, raise awareness and consciousness, develop organizations, and grow the movement.

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Use Cases

Outreach: involve tech workers in your initiatives. Let them know you exist.

Agitprop: expose tech workers to more political and union-related content.

Discovery: find new spaces for participation.

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The Database

Here you can see a read-only view of the database. Take your time to explore it!

Below you will find an explanation of the method used to curate it and a form to submit your proposals.

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What is included in the database?

There are a few rules in place to keep this database specific, structured, and useful. Here are some rules that are applied to decide what makes a good Pasture that can be included:

1. Every entry should constitute a relevant way to reach tech workers. Tech workers must be a major target of the Pasture. General-purpose spaces where tech workers are also present won’t be considered.
2. A Pasture should either be accessible directly (i.e. a forum or a hashtag) or be expressly open to contributions or collaborations (i.e. influencers resharing content, social blogs, media outlets who have a guest writers policy). Individual journalists, or news websites who might be interested in techno-political content are not included. The principle is to prioritize ways of circulating content with low friction.
3. The stated political position or policy toward political content of a given Pasture is not a parameter for inclusion, as long as political content has a chance to go through. It’s up to who’s using the database to decide how to work around specific policies or what kind of content is appropriate to publish there. The principle is to give means to reach tech workers where they are, and not to select spaces already aligned with a given value or position.

How are Pastures categorized?

We guide your discovery by specifying some categorical properties, to give a rough idea of what the Pasture is about.

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Type

Pastures can vary in nature. While they all attract tech workers willing to graze some information, in practice Pastures presents themselves in different forms.

👥 Community: forums, social bookmarking websites, groups on social media, public chatrooms.

🎙️ Influencer: a person or organization with a strong social media presence, who regularly posts content about tech workers organizing, politics, or related topics.

#️⃣ Hashtag: a hashtag regularly used to aggregate content targeted to tech workers.

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Spiciness

Tolerated spiciness describes how the space receives politically-colored content, how radical positions are perceived, and how easy it is to present ideas that deviate from the status quo.

🌿Mild: only content that doesn’t appear controversial or political in tone is accepted.

🌶️Medium: criticism of the status quo is accepted, but radical ideas are often not well-received

🌶️🌶️ Hot: content critical of the status quo is regularly published, or generally welcome.

🌶️🌶️🌶️ Very hot: radical, utopian, and extreme ideas are accepted.

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Complexity

Tolerated complexity describes how a Pasture receives content with different levels of complexity in language, abstraction, and required knowledge.

➡️ Simple: the Pasture expects very straightforward content, simple in language, to be parsed without prior exposure to political discourse, theory, or philosophy.

❓ Challenging: the Pasture allows content that demands some effort to be understood by tech workers without previous knowledge of political topics.

😓 Complex: the Pasture receives positively content intended for people already politicized and used to political theory or practice.

🔮 Obscure: esoteric, highly abstract, hard-to-parse material is allowed in the Pasture.

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This database is a collective effort that grows with your contribution. Share your pastures with us using this form. We will review your submissions and add them to the database.