Since I deleted my Whatsapp profile a few years ago (the only profile left of myself on Meta evil empire) I keep getting glared at, teased or scolded by friends and acquaintances. This doesn’t bother me much because it was expected. But there are two things that do bother me, a lot.

The first one is that when it comes to digital technologies, even most of the politically engaged people who are attentive to critical consumption and ethical choices in their lifestyle they just take what is sold them without questioning or, if they are aware of the issues of Big Tech products, they shrug their shoulders, stating that everybody does so and there is no way around.

The second one (which is related) is that we (as a society) have entrusted almost all of our communications to a single private company that has proven time and time again to be a very bad actor (well, two companies, since we should count Alphabet/Google as well). And we do not even think about it or, if we do, we do not care.

That is so problematic that I do not even know where to start from. Tech is taken as something almost magical, and everyone thinks that services and devices are the way they are because they could not have been different, thus falling into the technological determinism that has been pushed by tech companies for decades now.

Of course it could have been different (and it is different – if you take the time to look around and learn). But if mainstream tech, the one that comes packed in the black boxes we call smartphones, is what it is, it is because of the political-economic ideology that is embedded in it: profit. Just profit (not for us, of course): profit over people’s rights, profit over human rights, profit over commons, profit over biological life.

Even if it is a battle that will be lost in the long term (and I am not sure this will be the case), it is worth fighting. Against surveillance capitalism, against enshittification, against exctractivism.

Alternatives exist: Signal (or xmpp, if you are a bit of a geek) for encrypted instant messaging (audio and video calls included), the Fediverse for social networking, open repositories for Android apps (sorry Apple fans: you are completely locked in!) and many more open source apps and software to avoid our lives being exploited for someone else’s profit.

Now that Meta has gone full in in the support of the fascist Trump administration (as well as Bezos’ Amazon, by the way), do you want to keep using services run by a company that has had a role in genocide, child abuse, fascism promotion, exploitation and much more? Or do you want to stand with those who are resisting?