Bye, Big Tech!

18.06.2025

In the early days of Facebook, Twitter & Co., we were offered platforms and tools for networking free of charge. It was all too tempting not to join. I still remember the cozy feeling I had when I started sharing content in 2008 and the first likes and friend requests rolled in. That was the beginning of an endless stream of dopamine hits and distractions. I wonder how many hours I've spent there over the years?

But it wasn't just entertainment: there were times when every popular Facebook post led to a spike in job inquiries. For me, as a freelancer, this was life-changing. And then there were the many people I met online and which later on even became friends. Those relationships still shape my life today.

For a few years, my second life on Facebook remained fun and light-hearted. But around 2010, a murmur spread through the online world: "If it's free, you are the product." A quote from artist Richard Serra from 1973 suddenly became popular. On May 31, 2010, "Quit Facebook Day" was declared because many people criticized Facebook’s approach to data privacy. But not many actually left the platform. Even then, people understood that quitting Facebook came at a high cost. Being disconnected from the global community already felt threatening.

But when the Cambridge Analytica scandal surrounding the 2016 U.S. presidential election broke, people around the world finally understood that user data had been misused for political purposes. In 2018, with the introduction of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU parliament made timid attempts to regulate. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg remained relaxed and demonstrated the power of Silicon Valley with his appearance before the EU Parliament.

Today, countless data scandals later, Facebook feels like a mausoleum to me. In the rare moments when I open the app, I see some of my old online contacts still hanging on, some of them mourned in obituaries, all framed by a flood of ads and the unavoidable cooking videos from Nara Smith. A bitter aftertaste remains: that my years of content posting helped fuel the platform’s rise. Everyone who was and is active on social media has, in the end, performed unpaid labor and given up the rights to their digital creations. That was the deal. What’s astonishing is that I didn’t see it at the beginning. Eventually, after many years, I woke up with a digital hangover.

From a vague discomfort has grown the realization: billions of users have directly or indirectly contributed to a world economy now dominated by just a few corporations. Big Tech - the powerhouses of Google, Amazon, META, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others - now hold unprecedented concentrations of money and power.

What Are the Problems with Big Tech?

Monopoly Power

A few corporations like Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft dominate key digital markets: search, social networks, cloud computing, mobile operating systems, and e-commerce. This makes it impossible to compete, hinders innovation, and gives these companies disproportionate control over digital infrastructure and user behavior.

Surveillance Capitalism

Big Tech platforms collect massive amounts of personal data to predict and influence user behavior with the goal of maximizing profit. Shoshana Zuboff’s book on surveillance capitalism outlines how user attention and data are sold to advertisers or fed into ever more intrusive algorithms.

Algorithmic Manipulation & Disinformation

Algorithms optimized for maximum engagement amplify outrage, polarization, and false information. Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok guide users into filter bubbles or even radicalization loops, simply because it keeps them online longer.

Exploitation of Labor & Platform Work

From Amazon warehouses to Uber drivers, many business models are based on precarious labor. Algorithmic management and workplace surveillance often create dehumanizing conditions and erode labor rights.

Political Influence & Lobbying

Big Tech companies invest billions in lobbying to shape legislation, avoid regulation, and influence digital governance in their favor. Their infrastructure (e.g. AWS, Azure) is deeply embedded in public services and military contracts, further strengthening their power.

Erosion of Democratic Oversight

Platforms act increasingly like quasi-sovereign entities: moderating content, controlling access to digital markets, and shaping public discourse, mostly without transparency or accountability.

Environmental Impact

Massive data centers, constant hardware production, and global supply chains massively contribute to CO₂ emissions and resource depletion. Big Tech rarely takes responsibility for the ecological costs of these ever-running, extractive digital systems.

Dependency & Infrastructure Lock-In

Governments, schools, and businesses are increasingly reliant on Big Tech infrastructure like Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, or AWS. This creates path dependencies and makes it difficult to switch to ethical, open alternatives.

Lack of Accountability

When things go wrong, it’s difficult to hold Big Tech corporations accountable. Their vast resources allow them to hire top lawyers, outlast regulatory processes, and even withstand legal challenges from governments.

Flattening of Cultural Diversity

Recommendation systems, filter bubbles, and algorithmic biases lead to global cultural standardization. Dominant voices are amplified, contexts flattened. This creates a kind of digital monoculture that threatens cultural diversity everywhere.

How Can We Build Alternatives?

Big Tech poses serious challenges to democracy, accountability, equality, and cultural diversity. But resistance is possible. No one is forced to buy from Amazon. No one has to be on Instagram. There are alternatives. But they’re often invisible, underfunded, or pushed to the margins.

Resistance to Big Tech and the construction of meaningful alternatives is challenging, but achievable: through collective, technical, and cultural strategies:

It all starts with supporting ethical technology: open-source tools, decentralized platforms, platform co-ops. These prioritize user autonomy over profit. Also, Digital literacy is essential: people need to understand how surveillance capitalism works and how to regain control, e.g. through privacy-respecting tools and encrypted communication.Political and cultural resistance is necessary: campaigns, demands for regulation, and visions for a public digital infrastructure. Alternatives don’t need to match Big Tech’s scale. They can be local, small, context-specific. What matters is that they uphold dignity, community, and cultural plurality.

How Can We Build Sustainable Technology From the Ground Up?

If we truly want to move beyond Big Tech, we need more than good intentions. We need coordinated action across the following areas:

Platform Co-ops as a Starting Point

Platform cooperatives are digital platforms owned and governed by users or workers. They are based on shared ownership, democratic governance, fair value distribution, and transparent data policies.

Examples:

These projects often struggle with scaling, visibility, and funding. They need a supportive ecosystem.

Infrastructure as Commons

We need more than isolated ethical platforms. We need public digital infrastructure that others can build on:

  • Open-source code

  • Federated protocols like ActivityPub

  • Community-hosted servers

  • Sovereign hosting models

Examples:

Data as commons, managed via trusts or commons licenses, is a key pillar.

Embed Democratic Governance From the Start

While Big Tech rules through opaque algorithms, the post–Big Tech era must invert that logic.

User governance includes:

  • Co-decision-making

  • Open moderation

  • Participatory budgeting

  • Optionally through DAOs or smart contracts

Tools like Loomio, Hypha, or Aragon help embed collective decision-making.

Develop New Incentive & Funding Models

Instead of advertising and growth-at-all-costs, we need:

  • Membership contributions

  • Public funding

  • Municipal investment in digital commons

  • Crowdfunding

  • Commons-based token systems

Examples:

  • Circles UBI

  • Local currencies

  • Digital public goods as political goals

Localize & Contextualize

Good alternatives are never one-size-fits-all. They must respect cultural, linguistic, and legal contexts. Coordination doesn’t scale like Uber, it scales like interconnected islands of local knowledge.

The future lies in modular, interoperable platforms that are built on trust, federation, and mutual aid.

Education, Onboarding & Cultural Work

Even the most ethical platform will fail if no one understands or uses it. What’s crucial is: Good onboarding, intuitive UI/UX, digital literacy and transparent value chains

People don’t want “platforms”—they want concrete outcomes. Alternatives to platform monopolies must be tangible, useful, and human-scaled.

Whom To Support?

There’s a growing number of initiatives, collectives, and individuals working in diverse ways to develop democratic tech platforms. Here are just a few:

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