I honestly feel bad for him and hope his account gets restored. However, this definitely serves as a cautionary tale for everyone solely dependent on #bigTech #MegaCorps...
Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and…
@pluralistic I was just reading your recent article pluralistic.net/2025/12/11/not… and when you got to the bit at the end about how to stop them using surveillance pricing by not leaking so much personal data...
... for a second I thought you were going to recommend RTA's #BigTechWalkout2025 programme!
5/6 ⚠️ Mass surveillance could present itself in two ways: 1) if the Council's preferred voluntary scanning regime is extended indefinitely, #BigTech companies could be allowed to scan the messages of users without any need for suspicion of CSAM crimes.
2) the Council also wants to make it mandatory for most or all private communications services (emails, Signal messages, WhatsApp, etc.) and app stores to use age verification or similar tools. This would have a huge chilling effect.
@atomicpoet
Film maker and storyteller #MatthewCooke has two excellent episodes in his #podcast series on the impact of #SocialMedia on society.
This is no easy listening, but chilling and enlightening.
I strongly agree. Apart from the China 🇨🇳 controlled #TikTok, there is the central problem of the anti-democracy, rightwing #Techno Feudalist #US #BigTech platforms, such as #X or the ones owned by #Meta.
At the very least, the rage-promoting #Algorithms are fuelling the polarization of society, burning away social cohesion and conens, even destroying the #Truth and undermining democratic @fredix @InternetDev
Je suis tout à fait d'accord avec toi. Outre l'application #TikTok contrôlée par la Chine 🇨🇳, il existe un problème central lié aux plateformes anti-démocratiques et de droite #Techno Feudalist #US #BigTech, telles que #X ou celles détenues par #Meta.
À tout le moins, les #Algorithmes qui attisent la colère alimentent la...
Welcome to the age of privacy washing. Techs giants like Google and Microsoft appear privacy-focused, but this is a facade. What is privacy washing, and why is it happening? We explain below.
A couple of weeks ago I saw @pluralistic live in conversation with Novara Media, a fascinating talk, which is now available to watch online. One phrase he mentioned a couple of times was a post-American internet, where American big tech no longer dominates the landscape. If you're reading this on the Fediverse, I feel we're edging closer towards to this ideal. novaramedia.com/2025/12/07/the… #Enshittification #DigitalSovereignty #BigTech #NovaraMedia
🚄 All aboard the #HackerTrain to #FOSDEM !! 🚃
Going to #FOSDEM2026? Thinking of going by #train?
Would you like to meet other hackers along the way?
Join us on the https://hackertrain.
"Whenever he (@pluralistic) talks to policymakers, the response is that if anyone does anything progressive on tech regulation, the US trade representative would kick in their teeth."
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, blogger and activist, who is the very best form of troublemaker. He’s got a new book out on Enshitification, and I suspect everyone was expecting a talk on the book. Nope.
Someone kindly reached out to ask if I would consider speaking about Gaza Verified (gaza-verified.org/) at the Social Web Devroom being organised by the Social Web Foundation at FOSDEM.
My answer is no.
And I feel it’s important for those of us who care about such things to understand why:
• Social Web Foundation (socialwebfoundation.org) partners with, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises Meta
• FOSDEM (fosdem.org/2026) allows itself to be sponsored by, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises, Google and IBM (Red Hat)
Meta and Google are both surveillance capitalists with strong ties to the Trump regime that is arming and financing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. IBM, apart from having helped Nazi Germany carry out the Holocaust, is also singled out by name, alongside Google (Alphabet
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Someone kindly reached out to ask if I would consider speaking about Gaza Verified (gaza-verified.org/) at the Social Web Devroom being organised by the Social Web Foundation at FOSDEM.
My answer is no.
And I feel it’s important for those of us who care about such things to understand why:
• Social Web Foundation (socialwebfoundation.org) partners with, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises Meta
• FOSDEM (fosdem.org/2026) allows itself to be sponsored by, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises, Google and IBM (Red Hat)
Meta and Google are both surveillance capitalists with strong ties to the Trump regime that is arming and financing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. IBM, apart from having helped Nazi Germany carry out the Holocaust, is also singled out by name, alongside Google (Alphabet, Inc.), as complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people (aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/1/un…).
It shouldn’t be hard for organisations that purport to be alternatives to toxic Big Tech to not be sponsored and affiliated with them. But apparently it is.
Personally, I have no trouble saying no to having my name and legitimacy being used to whitewash these corporations and I have been doing so since the beginning.
I will not stand – literally or metaphorically – in front of their banners and talk about an initiative that tries to help the very people victimised by these corporations in their sociopathic quest for profit at any cost.
I hope more people start doing the same if we are to have any chance of making these corporations with their toxic business models and their complicity in genocide socially unacceptable. If we cannot even meet that already-very-low bar – as long as those of us with legitimacy allow ourselves to be used to normalise them – nothing will change.
Wow, if you search for signal messenger on DuckDuckGo using Chrome, the actual @signalapp web site is the *third* entry following ads for “Signal Private Messenger – Free Download” that leads to the site appmaus.com and “Get Signal Messenger | Install Signal App” that leads to the site filelocations.com.
DuckDuckGo should be held criminally liable for anyone who ends up downloading malware because of this.
What life is like for Palestinians from Gaza on centralised, US-based, Big Tech networks like Bluesky (yes, it’s all those things… did something about them make you think otherwise?)
The only flavour of decentralisation there’s no room for at FOSDEM is the kind that won’t speak at a conference that allows itself to be sponsored by, and thereby whitewashes, a surveillance capitalist like Google that is complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Something happened to me recently, and I don't mean to be dramatic, but it's truly a shameful thing. Two days ago, I joined the writing platform #substack & even though @aral & @fabio told me it wasn't a good platform for me, being Palestinian, I decided to interact on it and post my poems there. I was subjected to awful abuse in all verbal forms by Zionists there. But I preferred to remain silent instead of arguing with any fools. Today, the platform’s banned me!
Colorado's bold move to regulate high-risk #AI systems drew praise from policy analysts and interest from other states. But pressure from #BigTech and concerns about compliance costs have lawmakers reconsidering the law less than a year after it passed. theconversation.com/colorado-i…
one day you unwrap() what you shouldn't have, another day you again unwrap what you shouldn't have. What should I do with you bigtech? #cloudflare #whatsapp #bigtech
"#🦔Rothschild stufte #Amazon und #Microsoft auf „neutral“ herab und argumentierte, dass die #KI-Infrastruktur sechsmal so viel Kapital erfordert, um denselben wirtschaftlichen Wert wie die ursprüngliche Cloud-Umstellung zu...
Your daily reminder that @EUCommission are only cunts on days with names ending with day.
“The European Commission will launch its long-awaited bid to simplify digital rules in an effort to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses and to promote European start ups in the global artificial intelligence race.”
“TABS [by Mozilla] pulls exactly the data you need—from HTML to Markdown to JSON—using the fastest, most efficient method for each page. It adapts to the structure and complexity of the site, staying stealthy and reliable so your [AI] agents always get what they need without friction.”
Want a magic box that just works? #SteamMachine is for you. Want to build your own, choose your own components, architecture, even OS? You can do that too.
Both ways are completely compatible with each other. No corporate lockdowns or gatekeeping.
That's how technology should work.
#Valve is leading the way in how you can build a polished commercial ecosystem that still lets you do what you want, and plays nice with everyone else.
