Today we're talking about Internet corporations. And about US President
Donald Trump. And about our alternatives to this whole nightmare. ----
Internet Monopolists Put Trump on the Throne ---- In the cover photo of
this episode, you see a row of respectable-looking people in suits. It's
a photo from the inauguration of the new US President Donald Trump on
January 20 in Washington. These people in the front row are closer to
Trump than his appointed ministers. Who are they? Well, here's the
answer: ---- Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk
The only woman in the row is Lauren Sanchez, and she's not a billionaire
or a CEO, she's only there because she's Jeff Bezos' romantic partner.
Not in the photo is Apple CEO Tim Cook, but he was there, too, and in
the front row. Microsoft was represented by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
(OpenAI sells access to ChatGPT language models, and is effectively
owned by Microsoft). These are the richest people on the planet.
Specifically, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are ranked 2nd, 3rd, and 4th
on the Forbes list. Only France's Bernard Arnault, owner of the Louis
Vuitton fashion empire, is ahead of them, but judging by the trends,
that won't be for long. If nothing changes, in a few years he will be
displaced from the top spot by the owners of American high-tech
businesses. In fact, according to some estimates, after Trump's victory,
Elon Musk has already become the richest man on Earth.
As the comrades from CrimethInc write:
At this inauguration, we see a gathering of oligarchs who are lining up
to return Donald Trump to power. Capitalism is always the rule of
billionaires, but it is especially ironic that this particular
billionaire returned to power under the slogans of "confronting the
elite." In fact, the new Trump administration means an increase in state
violence in the interests of the super-rich elite. Everyone else is just
expendable material on the path to global dominance.
In English, there is a good expression "turkeys voting for Christmas."
As you know, in England and the US, turkey is traditionally eaten for
Christmas dinner, so the bird happily anticipating the upcoming holiday
is a metaphor for a situation where someone does not understand the
long-term consequences of their actions and, in fact, harms themselves
with these actions. The same goes for those poor Americans who voted for
Trump in the hope that he would "tame the billionaires and challenge the
insolent elite." Of course, in reality, Trump is flesh and blood of this
very "elite."
But we digress. Under capitalism, money is power. Each of these
high-tech barons donated a symbolic million dollars for Trump's
inauguration, and many media outlets describe this as an attempt to "pay
off" or please Trump. This may be partly true, but only partly. In fact,
it's hard to say who is kneeling before whom or kissing whose hands.
Trump himself is as much a billionaire as Musk, Bezos or Cook, only on a
much smaller scale. Estimates of his wealth vary, but in any case, it is
less than $10 billion - an order of magnitude less than the value of any
of the Big Tech corporations on the list above. So this is less like
pledging allegiance to a new king, and more like a ceremonial blessing
of a puppet on the throne. A puppet that will implement policies that
benefit the powerful barons.
What is interesting is that if you look at this list of the richest
billionaires or the list of companies with the highest market value,
they are all businesses related to the Internet, computers, smartphones
(which are also computers) or highly computerized devices like Tesla
cars. There are no metallurgists or aircraft manufacturers or even banks
in the top 5. There is only Big Tech. It is now the dominant technology
and form of capital. And these are the people lining up to bring a
conservative right-wing president to power in the United States. And not
just in the US - as we have discussed in previous issues of Trends, the
American president now functions in many ways as the president of the
entire Earth. That is why the stakes are so high.
Let's remember the basics. Capital always strives for accumulation and
monopolization. This desire naturally leads to support for fascist or
quasi-fascist political forces, because they give businesses long-term
guarantees that no one will disturb this business - neither competitors,
nor independent trade unions. In addition, fascist regimes like to start
large or small wars, and war always means generous government contracts,
shrouded in secrecy and going only to their own. We have already studied
this well in the example of Putin's Russia. It is quite possible that we
will now see this in the example of Trump's America. Of course, not all
oligarchs are as open as Elon Musk - not all of them will publicly throw
a Nazi salute or speak at congresses of European far-right parties. But
they all benefit from the further fascism of American politics - both
domestic and foreign.
All these big tech corporations got rich through monopolization.
Apologists of libertarianism and the "free market" like to praise
billionaires for their supposedly outstanding intellectual qualities,
creativity and all that. In reality, they accumulate capital by
capturing markets, by destroying even the hypothetical possibility of
competition and by effectively enslaving their users. Their products are
walled gardens, and these walled gardens do everything to make the costs
of switching platforms prohibitively high for users. Let's take a look.
Meta is the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp.
Alphabet is the company that owns Google, Android, Chrome, and all that
other stuff. Together, Meta and Alphabet completely control the global
Internet advertising market. Entering this market without their control
is almost impossible.
Alphabet exercises this control through its dominance of internet
search: 90% of the world's search queries are made on Google, and its
owners determine what exactly is shown in response to these queries.
Additionally, Alphabet's power is supported by its control over the
development of the most popular browser (Chrome) and the most popular
mobile operating system (Android).
Meta exercises its control over the advertising market through the
social networks Facebook and Instagram, with 4 billion users (almost
half the world's population). These platforms are based on tracking
users and extracting all possible data about them in order to then sell
targeted advertising. In addition, their recommendation algorithms are
designed to maximize the time people spend on relevant apps or websites
- in order to, in turn, maximize the number of ads that can be shown to
them. This is called the " attention economy ." Meta does everything to
prevent users from leaving for other platforms: buying up potential
competitors (Instagram, Whatsapp), prohibiting connections to its
services through third-party applications, and even removing mentions of
alternatives (for example, Pixelfed ).
Amazon Corporation is the largest online trading company in the USA, it
controls 40% of the market. But this is not the limit - in Germany,
France, Great Britain and Spain it already controls 70% of the market!
In fact, Amazon in many countries is becoming the only way for small
producers to get their products to the buyer. If you are not on Amazon,
then you are nowhere, and you go broke. This allows Amazon and its owner
Jeff Bezos to exercise monopoly control, including deciding how much
exactly sellers should pay him for each transaction. If you do not agree
to Jeff's terms, then you have nowhere to go. Amazon owns a huge
logistics infrastructure: warehouses, transport, pick-up points for
purchases, and so on. At the same time, the company is known for
hyper-exploitation of workers: to the point that they do not have time
to go to the toilet and are forced to urinate in bottles . As a logical
continuation of this, Amazon hates trade unions. Once its workers in
Quebec formed a union , the company immediately fired them all and is
now going back to using "third-party delivery." "Third-party delivery"
means precarious temporary workers who will have no rights at all
because they won't even have an employment contract.
Apple is the manufacturer of iPhones and Macs. It makes billions due to
its complete control over the AppStore application store. That is,
literally - you cannot install a program on your iPhone if it is not in
the AppStore. And what and under what conditions will be in the AppStore
is decided only by Apple and no one else. All applications that have at
least some payments transfer a large percentage of these payments to
Apple, and you cannot refuse this. If Apple decides that the application
should disappear from the store, it will disappear, and users can do
absolutely nothing about it. You also cannot install an application from
third-party sources. A few months ago, we already wrote about how Apple
removed several VPN applications from stores for Russian users. And
that's it - Mr. Tim Cook decided for you which programs you can run on
your smartphone and which you cannot. This is certainly the position of
a monopolist. This has even worried the European Union, which for
several years has been trying to pass a law so that such companies
(primarily Apple) allow the existence of alternative application stores.
In 2024, the cart moved and Apple formally allowed such stores, but
surrounded it with so many restrictions that in fact they do not exist.
Well, the funniest thing is that you can only use alternative stores if
you are in the European Union. If you leave Europe, all your
applications stop working. A great prospect. Apparently, Apple had more
money for lawyers and lobbyists than the EU.
There is no need to say much about Microsoft: 70% to 80% of desktop
computers in the world run on MS Windows. It is a closed source
operating system, and Microsoft has complete control over everything
that happens in it. In the past, the corporation made titanic efforts to
"hook" users on Windows, including free deliveries to schools and
universities - only to roll out gigantic bills a few years later. Now
Microsoft is also trying to monopolize the market for corporate e-mail
and document management systems (Outlook), and also controls a
significant share of the market for commercial systems of the so-called
"artificial intelligence" (models of the ChatGPT family).
Well, and finally, SpaceX and Tesla of Elon Musk. SpaceX is a separate
story, it is a space company, quite successful technologically, but
exists almost exclusively on state orders from the American government.
Tesla is more interesting, since it is more focused on the end consumer.
It is the most expensive car company in the world, and also controls the
largest share of batteries for electric cars. Naturally, Tesla cars run
on closed software. And, naturally, Tesla does everything possible to
prevent buyers from repairing cars or replacing broken parts themselves.
In fact, it has monopolized the market for repair and maintenance of its
electric cars, which has allowed it to raise prices uncontrollably.
There are currently several lawsuits on this matter in California. And,
of course, Tesla and Musk personally hate trade unions with every fiber
of their being.
Additionally, Musk also bought Twitter, renamed it to X and the first
thing he did was disable all alternative applications and the ability to
download open data from tweets. Only the owner should have control. In
general, this is the same picture again: a war against interoperability,
a war against the right to repair, a war against the buyer's right to do
what the buyer wants with his car, phone, computer, and so on. This is
an attempt to lock the consumer in a fenced pen from which he cannot
leave, and those who control the pen can do with it whatever they want.
In general, at various times the American government has recognized the
danger of these Internet monopolies and tried to break them up: this was
especially active in relation to Microsoft and Google. They were tried
for unfair competition and for violating antitrust laws. But when you
can spend more on lawyers than the Justice Department, you are generally
safe. So Google, Microsoft, and everyone else are still getting richer
than ever. And it is not at all surprising that they happily contributed
to Trump's victory. This victory makes their monopolies even stronger
and richer.
Naturally, there are such quasi-monopolists in Russia too, they just
have a lower pipe and thinner smoke. For brevity, I will simply list
such names as VK and Wildberries. Naturally, their capitalization is
orders of magnitude lower than that of Meta or Amazon, but the meaning
is the same. This also includes Telegram, which, apparently, still has
strong ties to Russia: for example, it actively sells user data for
targeted advertising to the same MTS.
This is how things stand in the world of the modern Internet. Once upon
a time, John Barlow, former lyricist of the Grateful Dead and founder of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in his "Declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace":
Governments of the industrial world, you impotent giants of flesh and
steel, I come to you from Cyberspace, the new home of Reason. In the
name of the future, I ask you who live in the past - leave us alone. You
are uninvited guests among us, and your power does not extend where we
gather.
We have no elected government, and we are not likely to have one, and I
address you only in the name of that authority whose name freedom itself
speaks. I declare the social space we are building to be by nature
independent of the tyranny you are trying to impose upon us. You have no
moral right to rule us, nor do you have any methods of coercion that we
have reason to fear.
Governments derive their power from the agreement of the governed. You
did not ask for, nor did you receive, our consent. We did not invite
you. You do not know us, and you do not know our world. Cyberspace lies
beyond your borders. Do not think that you can build it, like a factory
or a housing estate. You cannot. It is a natural formation that develops
on its own, through our collective actions.
Now these words seem overly optimistic. Huge corporations with
billionaires at the helm are quite successfully subordinating the
Internet to their will, extracting huge profits from it and placing
their puppets on the thrones of states. A very large part of the World
Wide Web is now being built according to the projects of Meta, Alphabet,
Microsoft and Apple.
No power to anyone: decentralized social networks
So what should anarchists do in this situation? Is there a way out of
the fenced-in proprietary platforms? It is clear that you can become a
Luddite, smash your smartphone and go live in the forest, but this is
hardly our ideal. But there are other alternatives.
If you remember, in early January Meta effectively cancelled the
fact-checking and disinformation-fighting program on its Facebook. That
is, the social network stopped moderating (or significantly reduced its
scale). At the same time, new Facebook guidelines for those moderators
who still remained leaked online, and they provide examples of
"legitimate" posts like "gays are not people, they need to be
destroyed," and so on. The guidelines recommend that moderators do
nothing with such posts or comments. All this has greatly excited the
public, especially the American one. Some applaud Zuckerberg for being
"on the side of free speech and against censorship," while others claim
that Facebook will now finally drown in disinformation, conspiracy
theories, and far-right, as well as Kremlin propaganda (much like
Twitter, aka X, did before this).
But in fact, the problem is not what kind of instructions Zuckerberg
gives there. The problem is the very existence of a system that allows
one billionaire to change the rules of communication for four billion
people at will. There should be no "kings" like Zuckerberg. We can argue
for a long time about which statements offend or do not offend whom,
call for violence or do not call, whether they are "extremist" or not,
whether it is hate speech or not. But there can be no single answer to
such questions for all people inhabiting the Earth.
Therefore, the only truly free (and therefore truly anarchist) answer is
decentralization and federation. People can independently unite into
communities and develop rules of communication within these communities:
so that there is always the possibility to move from one community to
another if suddenly the current rules are no longer satisfactory. This
is how the services included in the Fediverse are structured - a
decentralized association of social networks. The point is that there
should be no Mark Zuckerbergs or Tim Cooks who can dictate their will to
billions: everyone can create their own server with their own rules, and
the network itself does not belong to anyone. But all these servers
exchange information with others via the ActivityPub protocol .
I will list only the most famous platforms included in Fediverse.
Naturally, all of them are based on open and free source code:
Mastodon: A Twitter-like social network that has been compared to
BlueSky in recent years. But BlueSky, while positioning itself as a
Twitter/X alternative, is still a centralized, commercial company. There
are no independent BlueSky servers, and it will inevitably end up
catering to investors at the expense of its users. So, move on to
Mastodon! You can sign up for the Autonomous Action account here .
Peertube: An alternative to corporate video platforms like YouTube. No
ads, no tracking of users, full control over your content. Videos are
distributed to everyone who views them; PeerTube works somewhat like
torrents, only directly in the browser or mobile app.
Pixelfed: an Instagram-like app for sharing photos. Only without ads and
without tracking, decentralized, open-source, and without recommendation
algorithms designed to show ads. Let me remind you that Meta was so
scared when Pixelfed appeared that it banned its mention in Facebook
posts. Of course, it didn't help.
This is our solution: a gradual transition from corporate platforms to
free and decentralized platforms. The important thing is that each of
these platforms is not a fenced-in pen - they all interact with each
other, you can subscribe to a video channel in Peertube using an account
in Mastodon, and so on. This is radical interoperability, and it is this
that guarantees that the network will continue to develop in the way
that people themselves want, and not self-proclaimed kings with billions
in their pockets.
The concentration of capital and power in the hands of a small group of
ultra-rich oligarchs is extremely dangerous. We are already seeing how
it logically leads to the "rightward" of states around the world, and
this, in turn, is the road to fascism and further wars. Do not help
them. Switch to platforms that respect your freedom, tell your friends
about them. It is difficult for one person to leave Instagram or
Facebook - after all, all friends will remain there, how can one live in
such loneliness? When a person is alone, he is weak. But when you are
together, you become a force - the very same collective force that all
these Musks and Bezoses are so afraid of. When ten friends leave
Instagram for Pixelfed, then this is a collective and, I am not afraid
of this word, revolutionary action. Do it.
Well, that's all for today! We remind you that in "Trends of Order and
Chaos" the participants of Autonomous Action and other authors give
anarchist assessments of current events. Listen to us on YouTube ,
SoundCloud and other platforms, visit our website avtonom.org ,
subscribe to our social networks and e-mail newsletter .
The issue was prepared by Mani
https://avtonom.org/news/ogorozhennye-zagony-milliarderov-i-otkrytaya-set-lyudey-trendy-poryadka-i-haosa-epizod-195
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Donald Trump. And about our alternatives to this whole nightmare. ----
Internet Monopolists Put Trump on the Throne ---- In the cover photo of
this episode, you see a row of respectable-looking people in suits. It's
a photo from the inauguration of the new US President Donald Trump on
January 20 in Washington. These people in the front row are closer to
Trump than his appointed ministers. Who are they? Well, here's the
answer: ---- Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk
The only woman in the row is Lauren Sanchez, and she's not a billionaire
or a CEO, she's only there because she's Jeff Bezos' romantic partner.
Not in the photo is Apple CEO Tim Cook, but he was there, too, and in
the front row. Microsoft was represented by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
(OpenAI sells access to ChatGPT language models, and is effectively
owned by Microsoft). These are the richest people on the planet.
Specifically, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are ranked 2nd, 3rd, and 4th
on the Forbes list. Only France's Bernard Arnault, owner of the Louis
Vuitton fashion empire, is ahead of them, but judging by the trends,
that won't be for long. If nothing changes, in a few years he will be
displaced from the top spot by the owners of American high-tech
businesses. In fact, according to some estimates, after Trump's victory,
Elon Musk has already become the richest man on Earth.
As the comrades from CrimethInc write:
At this inauguration, we see a gathering of oligarchs who are lining up
to return Donald Trump to power. Capitalism is always the rule of
billionaires, but it is especially ironic that this particular
billionaire returned to power under the slogans of "confronting the
elite." In fact, the new Trump administration means an increase in state
violence in the interests of the super-rich elite. Everyone else is just
expendable material on the path to global dominance.
In English, there is a good expression "turkeys voting for Christmas."
As you know, in England and the US, turkey is traditionally eaten for
Christmas dinner, so the bird happily anticipating the upcoming holiday
is a metaphor for a situation where someone does not understand the
long-term consequences of their actions and, in fact, harms themselves
with these actions. The same goes for those poor Americans who voted for
Trump in the hope that he would "tame the billionaires and challenge the
insolent elite." Of course, in reality, Trump is flesh and blood of this
very "elite."
But we digress. Under capitalism, money is power. Each of these
high-tech barons donated a symbolic million dollars for Trump's
inauguration, and many media outlets describe this as an attempt to "pay
off" or please Trump. This may be partly true, but only partly. In fact,
it's hard to say who is kneeling before whom or kissing whose hands.
Trump himself is as much a billionaire as Musk, Bezos or Cook, only on a
much smaller scale. Estimates of his wealth vary, but in any case, it is
less than $10 billion - an order of magnitude less than the value of any
of the Big Tech corporations on the list above. So this is less like
pledging allegiance to a new king, and more like a ceremonial blessing
of a puppet on the throne. A puppet that will implement policies that
benefit the powerful barons.
What is interesting is that if you look at this list of the richest
billionaires or the list of companies with the highest market value,
they are all businesses related to the Internet, computers, smartphones
(which are also computers) or highly computerized devices like Tesla
cars. There are no metallurgists or aircraft manufacturers or even banks
in the top 5. There is only Big Tech. It is now the dominant technology
and form of capital. And these are the people lining up to bring a
conservative right-wing president to power in the United States. And not
just in the US - as we have discussed in previous issues of Trends, the
American president now functions in many ways as the president of the
entire Earth. That is why the stakes are so high.
Let's remember the basics. Capital always strives for accumulation and
monopolization. This desire naturally leads to support for fascist or
quasi-fascist political forces, because they give businesses long-term
guarantees that no one will disturb this business - neither competitors,
nor independent trade unions. In addition, fascist regimes like to start
large or small wars, and war always means generous government contracts,
shrouded in secrecy and going only to their own. We have already studied
this well in the example of Putin's Russia. It is quite possible that we
will now see this in the example of Trump's America. Of course, not all
oligarchs are as open as Elon Musk - not all of them will publicly throw
a Nazi salute or speak at congresses of European far-right parties. But
they all benefit from the further fascism of American politics - both
domestic and foreign.
All these big tech corporations got rich through monopolization.
Apologists of libertarianism and the "free market" like to praise
billionaires for their supposedly outstanding intellectual qualities,
creativity and all that. In reality, they accumulate capital by
capturing markets, by destroying even the hypothetical possibility of
competition and by effectively enslaving their users. Their products are
walled gardens, and these walled gardens do everything to make the costs
of switching platforms prohibitively high for users. Let's take a look.
Meta is the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp.
Alphabet is the company that owns Google, Android, Chrome, and all that
other stuff. Together, Meta and Alphabet completely control the global
Internet advertising market. Entering this market without their control
is almost impossible.
Alphabet exercises this control through its dominance of internet
search: 90% of the world's search queries are made on Google, and its
owners determine what exactly is shown in response to these queries.
Additionally, Alphabet's power is supported by its control over the
development of the most popular browser (Chrome) and the most popular
mobile operating system (Android).
Meta exercises its control over the advertising market through the
social networks Facebook and Instagram, with 4 billion users (almost
half the world's population). These platforms are based on tracking
users and extracting all possible data about them in order to then sell
targeted advertising. In addition, their recommendation algorithms are
designed to maximize the time people spend on relevant apps or websites
- in order to, in turn, maximize the number of ads that can be shown to
them. This is called the " attention economy ." Meta does everything to
prevent users from leaving for other platforms: buying up potential
competitors (Instagram, Whatsapp), prohibiting connections to its
services through third-party applications, and even removing mentions of
alternatives (for example, Pixelfed ).
Amazon Corporation is the largest online trading company in the USA, it
controls 40% of the market. But this is not the limit - in Germany,
France, Great Britain and Spain it already controls 70% of the market!
In fact, Amazon in many countries is becoming the only way for small
producers to get their products to the buyer. If you are not on Amazon,
then you are nowhere, and you go broke. This allows Amazon and its owner
Jeff Bezos to exercise monopoly control, including deciding how much
exactly sellers should pay him for each transaction. If you do not agree
to Jeff's terms, then you have nowhere to go. Amazon owns a huge
logistics infrastructure: warehouses, transport, pick-up points for
purchases, and so on. At the same time, the company is known for
hyper-exploitation of workers: to the point that they do not have time
to go to the toilet and are forced to urinate in bottles . As a logical
continuation of this, Amazon hates trade unions. Once its workers in
Quebec formed a union , the company immediately fired them all and is
now going back to using "third-party delivery." "Third-party delivery"
means precarious temporary workers who will have no rights at all
because they won't even have an employment contract.
Apple is the manufacturer of iPhones and Macs. It makes billions due to
its complete control over the AppStore application store. That is,
literally - you cannot install a program on your iPhone if it is not in
the AppStore. And what and under what conditions will be in the AppStore
is decided only by Apple and no one else. All applications that have at
least some payments transfer a large percentage of these payments to
Apple, and you cannot refuse this. If Apple decides that the application
should disappear from the store, it will disappear, and users can do
absolutely nothing about it. You also cannot install an application from
third-party sources. A few months ago, we already wrote about how Apple
removed several VPN applications from stores for Russian users. And
that's it - Mr. Tim Cook decided for you which programs you can run on
your smartphone and which you cannot. This is certainly the position of
a monopolist. This has even worried the European Union, which for
several years has been trying to pass a law so that such companies
(primarily Apple) allow the existence of alternative application stores.
In 2024, the cart moved and Apple formally allowed such stores, but
surrounded it with so many restrictions that in fact they do not exist.
Well, the funniest thing is that you can only use alternative stores if
you are in the European Union. If you leave Europe, all your
applications stop working. A great prospect. Apparently, Apple had more
money for lawyers and lobbyists than the EU.
There is no need to say much about Microsoft: 70% to 80% of desktop
computers in the world run on MS Windows. It is a closed source
operating system, and Microsoft has complete control over everything
that happens in it. In the past, the corporation made titanic efforts to
"hook" users on Windows, including free deliveries to schools and
universities - only to roll out gigantic bills a few years later. Now
Microsoft is also trying to monopolize the market for corporate e-mail
and document management systems (Outlook), and also controls a
significant share of the market for commercial systems of the so-called
"artificial intelligence" (models of the ChatGPT family).
Well, and finally, SpaceX and Tesla of Elon Musk. SpaceX is a separate
story, it is a space company, quite successful technologically, but
exists almost exclusively on state orders from the American government.
Tesla is more interesting, since it is more focused on the end consumer.
It is the most expensive car company in the world, and also controls the
largest share of batteries for electric cars. Naturally, Tesla cars run
on closed software. And, naturally, Tesla does everything possible to
prevent buyers from repairing cars or replacing broken parts themselves.
In fact, it has monopolized the market for repair and maintenance of its
electric cars, which has allowed it to raise prices uncontrollably.
There are currently several lawsuits on this matter in California. And,
of course, Tesla and Musk personally hate trade unions with every fiber
of their being.
Additionally, Musk also bought Twitter, renamed it to X and the first
thing he did was disable all alternative applications and the ability to
download open data from tweets. Only the owner should have control. In
general, this is the same picture again: a war against interoperability,
a war against the right to repair, a war against the buyer's right to do
what the buyer wants with his car, phone, computer, and so on. This is
an attempt to lock the consumer in a fenced pen from which he cannot
leave, and those who control the pen can do with it whatever they want.
In general, at various times the American government has recognized the
danger of these Internet monopolies and tried to break them up: this was
especially active in relation to Microsoft and Google. They were tried
for unfair competition and for violating antitrust laws. But when you
can spend more on lawyers than the Justice Department, you are generally
safe. So Google, Microsoft, and everyone else are still getting richer
than ever. And it is not at all surprising that they happily contributed
to Trump's victory. This victory makes their monopolies even stronger
and richer.
Naturally, there are such quasi-monopolists in Russia too, they just
have a lower pipe and thinner smoke. For brevity, I will simply list
such names as VK and Wildberries. Naturally, their capitalization is
orders of magnitude lower than that of Meta or Amazon, but the meaning
is the same. This also includes Telegram, which, apparently, still has
strong ties to Russia: for example, it actively sells user data for
targeted advertising to the same MTS.
This is how things stand in the world of the modern Internet. Once upon
a time, John Barlow, former lyricist of the Grateful Dead and founder of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in his "Declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace":
Governments of the industrial world, you impotent giants of flesh and
steel, I come to you from Cyberspace, the new home of Reason. In the
name of the future, I ask you who live in the past - leave us alone. You
are uninvited guests among us, and your power does not extend where we
gather.
We have no elected government, and we are not likely to have one, and I
address you only in the name of that authority whose name freedom itself
speaks. I declare the social space we are building to be by nature
independent of the tyranny you are trying to impose upon us. You have no
moral right to rule us, nor do you have any methods of coercion that we
have reason to fear.
Governments derive their power from the agreement of the governed. You
did not ask for, nor did you receive, our consent. We did not invite
you. You do not know us, and you do not know our world. Cyberspace lies
beyond your borders. Do not think that you can build it, like a factory
or a housing estate. You cannot. It is a natural formation that develops
on its own, through our collective actions.
Now these words seem overly optimistic. Huge corporations with
billionaires at the helm are quite successfully subordinating the
Internet to their will, extracting huge profits from it and placing
their puppets on the thrones of states. A very large part of the World
Wide Web is now being built according to the projects of Meta, Alphabet,
Microsoft and Apple.
No power to anyone: decentralized social networks
So what should anarchists do in this situation? Is there a way out of
the fenced-in proprietary platforms? It is clear that you can become a
Luddite, smash your smartphone and go live in the forest, but this is
hardly our ideal. But there are other alternatives.
If you remember, in early January Meta effectively cancelled the
fact-checking and disinformation-fighting program on its Facebook. That
is, the social network stopped moderating (or significantly reduced its
scale). At the same time, new Facebook guidelines for those moderators
who still remained leaked online, and they provide examples of
"legitimate" posts like "gays are not people, they need to be
destroyed," and so on. The guidelines recommend that moderators do
nothing with such posts or comments. All this has greatly excited the
public, especially the American one. Some applaud Zuckerberg for being
"on the side of free speech and against censorship," while others claim
that Facebook will now finally drown in disinformation, conspiracy
theories, and far-right, as well as Kremlin propaganda (much like
Twitter, aka X, did before this).
But in fact, the problem is not what kind of instructions Zuckerberg
gives there. The problem is the very existence of a system that allows
one billionaire to change the rules of communication for four billion
people at will. There should be no "kings" like Zuckerberg. We can argue
for a long time about which statements offend or do not offend whom,
call for violence or do not call, whether they are "extremist" or not,
whether it is hate speech or not. But there can be no single answer to
such questions for all people inhabiting the Earth.
Therefore, the only truly free (and therefore truly anarchist) answer is
decentralization and federation. People can independently unite into
communities and develop rules of communication within these communities:
so that there is always the possibility to move from one community to
another if suddenly the current rules are no longer satisfactory. This
is how the services included in the Fediverse are structured - a
decentralized association of social networks. The point is that there
should be no Mark Zuckerbergs or Tim Cooks who can dictate their will to
billions: everyone can create their own server with their own rules, and
the network itself does not belong to anyone. But all these servers
exchange information with others via the ActivityPub protocol .
I will list only the most famous platforms included in Fediverse.
Naturally, all of them are based on open and free source code:
Mastodon: A Twitter-like social network that has been compared to
BlueSky in recent years. But BlueSky, while positioning itself as a
Twitter/X alternative, is still a centralized, commercial company. There
are no independent BlueSky servers, and it will inevitably end up
catering to investors at the expense of its users. So, move on to
Mastodon! You can sign up for the Autonomous Action account here .
Peertube: An alternative to corporate video platforms like YouTube. No
ads, no tracking of users, full control over your content. Videos are
distributed to everyone who views them; PeerTube works somewhat like
torrents, only directly in the browser or mobile app.
Pixelfed: an Instagram-like app for sharing photos. Only without ads and
without tracking, decentralized, open-source, and without recommendation
algorithms designed to show ads. Let me remind you that Meta was so
scared when Pixelfed appeared that it banned its mention in Facebook
posts. Of course, it didn't help.
This is our solution: a gradual transition from corporate platforms to
free and decentralized platforms. The important thing is that each of
these platforms is not a fenced-in pen - they all interact with each
other, you can subscribe to a video channel in Peertube using an account
in Mastodon, and so on. This is radical interoperability, and it is this
that guarantees that the network will continue to develop in the way
that people themselves want, and not self-proclaimed kings with billions
in their pockets.
The concentration of capital and power in the hands of a small group of
ultra-rich oligarchs is extremely dangerous. We are already seeing how
it logically leads to the "rightward" of states around the world, and
this, in turn, is the road to fascism and further wars. Do not help
them. Switch to platforms that respect your freedom, tell your friends
about them. It is difficult for one person to leave Instagram or
Facebook - after all, all friends will remain there, how can one live in
such loneliness? When a person is alone, he is weak. But when you are
together, you become a force - the very same collective force that all
these Musks and Bezoses are so afraid of. When ten friends leave
Instagram for Pixelfed, then this is a collective and, I am not afraid
of this word, revolutionary action. Do it.
Well, that's all for today! We remind you that in "Trends of Order and
Chaos" the participants of Autonomous Action and other authors give
anarchist assessments of current events. Listen to us on YouTube ,
SoundCloud and other platforms, visit our website avtonom.org ,
subscribe to our social networks and e-mail newsletter .
The issue was prepared by Mani
https://avtonom.org/news/ogorozhennye-zagony-milliarderov-i-otkrytaya-set-lyudey-trendy-poryadka-i-haosa-epizod-195
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