As the election comes to an end it’s become clearer that technocrats are indeed having their field day. The giants have gloriously won the day having toiled early on to take the lead in internet search, hosting, payments, & goods. I tip my hat to them for their genius in seeing this day coming.
All platitudes aside though, I don’t feel safer from the behemoths they’ve become because they’ve taken advantage of weak privacy laws in the US to collect, learn, & share millions of data points about us all. And even more scary is they’ve begun to turn over this data to algorithms to massage your ecosystem. So, I’ve begun to move all my accounts and data to less FANG connected enterprises. This won’t be easy but so far I’ve made the below changes…
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Odysee -> YouTube replacement(not quite a full replacement)
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Telegram -> Twitter replacement(Signed off and Disabled)
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MeWe -> Facebook replacement(Signed off and Disabled)
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Protonmail / Posteo -> Gmail replacement (accounts are setup but lots of work to change hundreds of accounts)
As I move I realize some Americans are struggling with the same questions about how to de-tangle yourself from Big Tech and most will never do it because it’s too hard. That should tell you something about how we’ve relied too heavily on the technology solutions readily available rather than take the time to discover alternatives. Still I’m hopeful that some leaders in the industry will step and take charge of the risks to consumers in their privacy.
Lastly, as I write this Bitcoin and Ethereum have had a renaissance of sorts. As I’ve invested in these over the last 2 months I’ve read more about blockchain and the 100s of projects springing up to take advantage of the blockchain(Ethereum) open source. The most exciting component of blockchain is decentralization. Time will tell how quickly this idea can disrupt the technology industry and return the internet back to a fairer playing field.