Rise 016 - Big Tech Exodus
Big Tech’s power has grown out of control. The time to leave the platforms has arrived.
£Trillions have been invested over the past 20 years in ‘digitisation’: the re-platforming of large parts of our system from traditional service delivery models to a dynamic new world of apps, automation, algorithms and platforms.
The human impact has been huge.
Citizens are now accustomed to seamless, intelligent, high-quality digital experiences across the entire economic system. We are more connected and, in some ways, better served than at any other time in human history.
But something isn’t right.
Despite many positive outcomes, there are fundamental issues with the current configuration of large parts of the system which must be addressed as we look towards the future.
What kind of world have we actually built?
A major consequence of digitisation is we are now dependent on an increasingly powerful Big Tech cartel to run large parts of our society.
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple (FAMGA) expanded at an extraordinary rate as global COVID lockdowns accelerated and embedded the shift to digital in every area of our lives. Including in places such as healthcare, which, until COVID, had been understandably cautious about embracing new technologies.
An ever-increasing amount of human existence is now routed through the servers of a handful of global corporations. Mediated, as Mark Zuckerberg would have it, through a ‘Metaverse’ of interconnected, interoperable, algorithmically-fuelled data platforms that know us better than we know ourselves.
Although presented as a good and inevitable thing for humanity, what’s been created is, in effect, a digital concentration camp. A 21st Century Panopticon where every thought, word and deed is tracked, recorded and made available for scrutiny by a mind-bending array of corporate and state actors on a perpetual basis.
Is this a good place for us to be?
In a word, no.
Whether you’re catching up with friends on Facebook, or using AWS to run back office systems for a major corporation, most of us are simply renting space in Big Tech’s universe. The vast majority of humanity has no ownership in, control over or understanding of the fundamental technologies on which our society is built. The larger and more entrenched the hyper-efficient corporate entities who own these technologies become, the fewer opportunities there are for others to participate in a meaningful way within the system.
Many are being left behind and, it would seem, deliberately so.
Return On Engagement (ROE) business models, in particular, have a deeply troubling effect on mental health. Companies use these models to maximise advertising revenues by keeping users on their platforms for as long as possible, regardless of the negative impact on the individual. Designing experiences specifically to addict users to apps is common practice (sometimes called Dark UI). Comparing this with nicotine addiction and the misdeeds of the tobacco industry is entirely reasonable: the Big Tech public health crisis is commensurate with the one caused by Big Tobacco in the late 20th Century.
Despite endless public statements to the contrary, many Big Tech firms clearly view concepts such as ‘privacy’, which is fundamental to human freedom, as outdated and inconvenient. Our personal information, the lifeblood of their businesses, is traded as a commodity with little (if any) tangible value being returned to its rightful owners. Facebook freely admits that it doesn’t know what it does with your data and never really considered privacy when building its platform.
Censorship and de-platforming present yet more threats to fundamental rights. We should be asking serious questions about whether we’re comfortable with public discourse being policed by people who’ve consistently proven themselves to be unethical, manipulative, anti-competitive and, at times, evil over the past few decades. Companies that use slave labour in their supply chains and enable human trafficking networks shouldn’t be making decisions about what is and isn’t true.
Sundar Pichai was paid $200m this year for spying on you on behalf of the military industrial complex. Trebles all round, as they say.
Regulators appear either powerless or, more likely, unwilling to address this unprecedented centralisation of power. The Twitter Files are revealing the existence of a censorship industrial complex of formal collusion between the highest levels of government, intelligence agencies and tech corporations. They describe an unprecedented global effort to suppress crisis-averting information relating to the COVID Pandemic, as well as the existence and veracity of Hunter Biden’s remarkable laptop in the run-up to the 2020 American Presidential Election. I have no doubt we’ve only just scratched the surface of what is ultimately going to be revealed.
The onus is now on everyday citizens and businesses outside of the Big Tech ecosystem to lead towards positive change.
What can we do about it?
In short: take your time, money and data elsewhere.
Substantial portions of the Big Tech stack have already been recreated as Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), or by smaller commercial players seeking to disrupt the status quo by operating in a more ethical way than the mainstream platforms. Much of this technology is mature and ready to support a mass exodus from Big Tech.
A few examples below, none of which I have a commercial interest in:
Social
Open Source social platform Mastodon allows you to host and run your own social media network with hundreds-of-thousands of users and the functionality of a Twitter / Instagram hybrid for just a few dollars a month.
As a Mastodon administrator you own the data, the feed, and can connect with your audience whenever you please without having to pay for the privilege. Mastodon has the potential to revolutionise a range of industries who are largely reliant on Facebook and Twitter to manage larger social communities.
Having said all that, it sounds like there may be issues with some of the content on the Mastodon network (Child Porn is a disease). And with the same being true for FB and Twitter (although to a lesser extent under Musk), there is a huge gap for a clean digital ecosystem for those ready to build it.
I’m also excited about Nostr, which I heard about this week.
Also worth looking at: Telegram, Gab, Gettr, Minds and Brax.
Video and streaming
Odysee is a video sharing app that’s built on the open-source, decentralized, blockchain-based LBRY network. This freewheeling, independent video streaming platform harks back to the early days of YouTube. I really like it.
The use of the LBRY network as a foundation gives Odysee several distinct advantages over centralised video sharing platforms where a single company controls the data. This includes greater resilience to censorship, lower fees on tips and donations compared to e.g. YouTube or Twitch, and more transparency around how it features your work.
Since its beta launch in September 2020 and full launch in November 2020, Odysee has become the most popular LBRY app and already has millions of users and uploads.
Also worth looking at: Rumble, Bitchute, BitTube, DLive.
Messaging
The team at Element.io believe people should be able to talk, via the internet, with the same level of privacy as a face-to-face conversation in their own home. That people should be able to communicate on their own terms; securely and in control of their data.
The platform is now used by over 35 million individuals, companies and governments to protect their communication and provides a compelling alternative to the likes of Slack and WhatsApp for enterprise and large group messaging.
I’m toying with the idea of setting up an Element instance for Rise… TBD.
Also worth looking at: Discord, Rocket.Chat
Operating system
Linux OS has been around for over 30 years, but 2023 could be the moment it truly breaks into the consumer mainstream. Former tech CEO Jeffrey Peterson is leading a grass-roots effort to migrate Middle America away from Microsoft, Apple and Google into a new world of FOSS running on Linux.
Peterson's efforts are centred around his fast-growing and highly informative Telegram channel. There is something deeply inspiring about seeing everyday people with little technical skill bringing old laptops back to life and reclaiming their digital sovereignty with a Linux installation.
I intend to make the leap myself in the next few months and will share my experience.
Hardware
We’re on the cusp of major disruption in hardware as more and more people opt out of the walled gardens and endless upgrade cycles of mainstream technology platforms and seek alternatives that are built on principles of sustainability, freedom and trust. This is a huge commercial opportunity the UK is well positioned to exploit and I’ll be talking about this much more over the coming months.
One great example is the FreedomPHONE - a free speech and privacy first mobile handset. Features like tracking blockers and an uncensorable App Store make it impervious to interference by outside forces.
Also worth looking at: De-googled Android Phones
Also, more stuff like this pls:
Cloud
We’ve already seen the tide turn in the Cloud computing space with established digital businesses like 37 Signals (of Basecamp fame) speaking about the reduced cost, increased flexibility and control of running your own cloud infrastructure.
“The public cloud was a great place for overnight success to happen. But it wasn’t sustainable. The sharp peaks in growth made it clear that we had a potential hit on our hands, and that cloud hosting was not going to be tenable long-term.”
Eron Nicholson
Director of Operations at 37signals
Operating your own cloud system, or migrating to a diversified ecosystem away from the big tech oligopoly is one of the most powerful and immediate ways to reclaim our digital sovereignty at scale. All Medium and Large sized businesses should be thinking about adopting this model.
In summary, the big tech ecosystem is set up against the everyday citizen and needs to be rebuilt on sound ethical principles.
An exodus from the platforms is possible right now. The barrier to entry in many areas of what used to be advanced tech has dropped to almost zero. The tools exist, we just need to specify, experiment, configure and deploy them in the right way and a new world outside of Big Tech’s influence can be built.
As William Gibson famously said, it’s “already here, just not evenly distributed yet.”
And I haven’t even mentioned AI or Web3.
More on those another time.
Rubin
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I made the leap to Linux in 1995, back when it was a bit of a challenge to get things running. Nowadays there are plenty of user-friendly distributions, like Linux Mint, that novices should be able to install and use.
Great article. You should look at Start9 - they are trying to make it easy for people to be self-sovereign and have a home server rather than use cloud services. StartOS includes a packaged up Element service too.