Down with Y O N D R
Defeating YONDR | Rationale | Discord

Sign the Petition to Oppose YONDR in Cape Girardeau, MO

Recent Updates

What is Yondr?

YONDR is a device which is designed to create a “Phone Free Zone.” The way way this is achieved is by locking people’s phones in bags which they cannot open. The pouches can, allegedly, only be opened with a special magnetic key. It’s pretty much the same technology that is used in anti-theft tags except this is designed to deny you the use of your phone.

YONDR is typically deployed against patrons in two types of establishments:

  1. Concert Venues
  2. Schools

In the case of venues, the aim is ostensibly to reduce the risk of copyright infringement. In the case of schools, teachers use this as an expedient to demand the attention of their pupils. There are plenty of reasons why neither approach will work, and there are even more reasons why this endangers those who are separated from what could be a lifeline in a time of emergency.

This website will explore these lockout devices, with an emphases on teaching you to defeat these measures. There are plenty of reasons to do this, but most of all, you should resist any sort of arbitrary authority. Even if it is well intentioned, authority is wrong and must be resisted whenever it tries to deprive you of your liberty. This is a basic guiding principle of a free people.

Special emphasis is given to counteracting YONDR in schools because that is the key battleground. We all have the option of simply not attending concerts. Schools, however, are a forced environment. You cannot simply not go, and so you need to be ever ready to fight back.

This site is under construction as we have only just begun to fight back against the YONDR menace. We encourage you to check back regularly. Also, if you have ideas, feel free to write them in our site comments so that we can post them here. Most of all, please let us know what you think!

You can follow/comment this site at this link.

Why is YONDR bad?

YONDR represents a regressive tendency based on a nostalgia for a false past. The basic goal is to un-invent the smartphone, a fool’s errand that is right up there with un-ringing a bell or pretending that a country has no blemishes in its history. Essentially, the phone is used as a scapegoat goat for all sorts of social ills, and it is no more correct than when the powers that be attacked the written word, novels, newspapers, television, etc.

This section contains various arguments and information that shows why adoption of the YONDR pouch is misguided.

Safety

  1. Getting lost in a crowd – When in a crowded venue, a phone is the best line of defense against getting separated from your friends/family. If you no one is allowed to communicate, no one can find one another easily.

  2. Medical Necessity – There are many types of medical devices which use phones for monitoring and control. Also, people with certain conditions and disabilities need to have a constant method to call for help at hand. While some venues grant exceptions, in order to access these a person has to give up a tremendous amount of very personal information. They deserve to have both privacy and security.

  3. Student Anxiety – Many students with anxiety disorders require a lifeline to parents, friends, and psychologists in order to cope with their school day. Few, if any, school grants exceptions to these students. The no-tolerance adoption of YONDR therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and inhibits the ability of these students to operate in an educational environment.

  4. School Shootings – Should the unthinkable happen, students can provide valuable information to first responders through the use of cell phones. When a school is under lockdown, if students are held incommunicado, they can neither assist in their own rescue nor let their parents know they are still alive. This endangers the lives of students, and it denies parents information about their child.

  5. Lack of Public Phones – Schools and venues want to dial back the clock, but they are not set up to handle it! There are no public phones anywhere in these spaces! 20 years ago, there would have been publicly accessible communication, but now the prevailing conceit is that everyone has their own phone. This means that locking phones in a pouch completely denies access to the outside world unless an authority figure authorizes it. In short, YONDR spaces are like prisons.

Respect

  1. Trust and Respect of Students – A good teacher respects their students. Moreover, a teacher’s job is to teach both knowledge and proper behavior to students. When students have their phones locked away, it tells them that they are not trusted. This, in turn, causes students to not trust their teachers. This means that they are less likely to ask them for help, and less likely to effectively learn from them.

  2. Amplification of Incompetence – A good teacher commands respect and attention while a poor teacher demands respect and attention. When a teacher looks to a solution such as YONDR, they are admitting that students do not value their courses. This is a teacher problem, not a student problem. Students should not respect authoritarian teachers and authoritarian teachers should find a new profession.

  3. YONDR Violates Public Will – In many districts, YONDR is opposed by virtually all parents and students, and yet school boards are apt to force them to accept this undue control. Are the school boards getting kickbacks? Are they training our children to give up autonomy in favor of a totalitarian paternalistic state? Do they even care that they are doing this with our tax dollars? We need to show them who is the master of whom.

  4. Lack of Teacher Accountability – Smartphones have been instrumental in exposing abusive teachers. If you eliminate these devices, students are basically defenseless. After all, when it is a student’s word against a teacher’s word, the student does not count. So then if a teacher supports these pouches, really they intend to harm their students with impunity.

  5. Concert Goers are Adults – People who purchase and attend events at a venue adult paying customers. The venue has no right to treat them as children, nor do the concert venues have any right to know why a person should be granted an exception. We have the right to respect, dignity, and privacy.

Missed Opportunities

  1. Phones in Educational Spaces – Like the calculator and the computer, the smartphone is an essential part of our world. Students need to learn to use these tools effectively, and many resources exist to use phones in the classroom. However, when these essential tools are locked away in a YONDR pouch, there is no possibility of these effective lessons. This, in turn, means that students from a YONDR school will lag behind the skills of students who attended more respectable institutions.

  2. Digital Payments – Phone payments are more secure than card payments. Many people have come to use services such as Apple Pay and Google Pay as their wallet. However, venues that ban phones have essentially banned a common form of payment and forced their patrons to take undue risks in the form of cash and credit cards.

  3. Digital Tickets – Many YONDR venues use services such as Ticket Master which does not result in the creation of a physical ticket. This means that attendees cannot access the admission that the venue itself issued. This leads to longer lines and greater frustration. It is also simply insulting and feels like a bait and switch operation.

What can I do about it?

Defeating the Pouches

  1. Learn to Open The Pouch – For all of their promises otherwise, the YONDR pouch is actually quite easy to open. You can open them with a neodymium magnet, an ink pen, or even simply banging them on the side of a chair. This page has links to YouTube videos which will show you how to do this.

  2. Destroy/Disable the Pouch – For the more daring, you could simply rip the pouches open by stripping the stitches with your keys. They are actually quite fragile. This is a bad idea at school as you will likely be charged money for the pouch. This should, however, be your go to action at a concert. The goal is to make the program too costly for it to continue.

  3. Use a Decoy – Another direct thing you can do is simply never put your real phone into the pouch. Instead, keep your real phone in your bag. Take on old/toy phone with you. As you enter school, put the fake phone in the pouch. The problem is solved!

Be Disruptive

  1. Malicious Compliance – Learn to weaponize the rules against your captors! You can actually cause more problems than these pouches solve, and if you do it correctly you can do it in a way that cannot cause too much trouble for yourself. For example, the canned policies that YONDR distributes says that a student who forgets the pouch will have their confiscated and their parents will have to pick it up. If you forget your pouch every day, you will teach your parents to despise the pouches. If enough of your school does this, you will overwhelm the office staff.

  2. Outright Defiance – Fight the man to his face! Pop the pouch open and use your phone whenever you please, right in the middle of class. Turn your ringer up before you insert your phone into the pouch. Set an alarm to go off in the middle of class. The possibilities are endless! Sure you will get in trouble, but you will make life a living hell for your oppressors.

  3. Protest – Walk out of school! Refuse to enter the school! Boycott the concerts! Cary placards! Shout loudly, and make life miserable for the pouch peddlers.

  4. Depend on Your Phone – When going to a concert, do not take a printed ticket. Do not take cash or card. Insist on doing everything through your phone. Even though you know how to open your pouch, when interacting with venue staff, no you don’t! Make the pouch as inconvenient as possible for them.

  5. Weaponize Chargebacks – Attend the concert, but then dispute the charges on your card. It may feeld like fraud, but the real fraudsters sold you a ticket without telling you that you had to attend in shackles. After all, the rules say that you can challenge charges if you were not satisifed with the service/product you received. You’re not satisfied with artists that don’t trust you, are you? If enough people dispute charges, credit card companies will remove vendor accounts. You can do real financial harm this way.

Petition the Authorities

  1. School Board Meetings – Speak at your school board meetings. Openly accuse your board of corruption. Openly accuse them of supporting the physical abuse of children. Give a speech that sounds like a complaint, but instructs everyone in attendance about how to defeat the pouches.

  2. Local Government – Write your local representatives. Let them know of your displeasure. Link them to this site!

  3. Sign Petitions – Sign every anti-YONDR petition you can find.

Discord

Come plot with us on discord! Share your YONDR stories, plot direct action and protests, or just come hang out and talk about anti-YONDR things. If you have a school that has decided to force you to give up your contact with the outside, let us know so we can add a channel for you. The more we plot, the more uneasy the powers that be will feel, and that’s what it’s all about!


https://discord.gg/JEM2xxDZgP
Home

Comment / Follow This Site