AI
Big Tech Captures $50 Billion a Year in Data
Global spend on real-time bidding in 2024 is estimated at $50 billion. Data brokers buy information from the DMV, airlines, and supermarkets. They sell it to big tech or to law enforcement. Governments have back doors into the platforms anyway. All this data feeds AI models that are sold back as products. Users are deeply entangled. Cloud email, social sign-ons, operating systems with built-in surveillance, and revokable licenses for media make leaving a complex problem.
Digital Resignation and the Need for Community
Researchers call this the privacy paradox: people feel creeped out but do nothing. The deck is stacked against them. They toggled Facebook privacy settings, which is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Individual behavioral change is hard. Successful groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers work through accountability groups. Network effects got us into this mess. Facebook spread through existing social networks at Harvard. The same network effects can move people in groups, so they don’t leave alone.
A Bicycle Repair Club for the Internet
The solution is a grassroots movement that spreads tools, skills, and community. The group calls it a bicycle repair club for the internet. Meet people where they are, on Discord, Blue Sky, or TikTok. Offer multiple pathways. One person may start with a password manager, another with a browser switch. Perfect cannot be the enemy of good. Small wins build confidence. After one step, like leaving X or installing Ubuntu, people write back asking which Linux distro to try.
Monthly Campaigns and Local Workshops
Last month’s campaign was Stop the Scroll, a behavioral switch to interrupt scrolling. This month is Chuck Zuck, an attempt to drop at least one Zuckerberg product. September brings Goodbye Gemini, helping people disable automated AI on their phones and try CalyxOS or Graphene. A Discord launches in September for peer support. In-person workshops will run in libraries and on college campuses. The goal is a network of local clubs across the country and around the world.
Q&A
How can local businesses and nonprofits that rely on Instagram and Facebook as their de facto website move away? Fediverse pages are functionally equivalent; Nextcloud can replace G Suite; it requires hand-holding and strong tools, but the focus is on early adopters for now. ▶ 19:54
How do you address the built-in addictiveness of these platforms? Persuasive design techniques from Stanford trained engineers to hijack our perceptual apparatus. Federated social media is more pleasant because it lacks algorithmic assault. It’s a behavioral addiction, not substance. Tools of behavioral change work. When Janet quit Facebook, she made a list of things to do instead every time she felt the phantom limb urge. ▶ 22:46
Notable Quotes
“What you’re hearing is a form of digit digital resignation” Janet Vertesi · ▶ 8:07
“the deck is stacked against users of technological systems” Janet Vertesi · ▶ 5:21
“We have been hacked” Janet Vertesi · ▶ 23:27
“It’s never all or nothing” Andy Hull · ▶ 21:30
Key Takeaways
- Big tech captures $50 billion/year in real-time bidding and buys data from DMV, airlines, and supermarkets.
- Community-based change mirrors AA’s group model, not individual quitting alone.
- Monthly campaigns (Chuck Zuck, Goodbye Gemini) give novices concrete first steps with peer support.
About the Speaker(s)
Janet Vertesi is associate professor of sociology at Princeton University, where she is well known for her ‘opt out experiments’ to evade tracking by data companies and embrace alternative tech systems, as well as for her in-depth studies of NASA’s teams. An expert in the nexus between technology and society, she is a mobile Linux evangelist, teaches courses in critical technical practice and design, and sits on the advisory boards of the Data & Society Institute and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Andy Hull has been abusing computers since they came with cassettes and not enough RAM. He dabbles with recreational hacking, enjoys a spot of light homelabbing, and still dreams of being a Demoscener next year. Andy believes that computers should be tools that set us free and enshrine our rights as humans, not abusive platforms that imprison and enrage us.