"Do not obey in advance"
From Timothy Snyder's book, "On Tyranny".
A thread on surviving and resisting authoritarianism.
How to survive the broligarchy:
20 lessons for the post-truth world
Carole Cadwalladr
Includes:
5 You have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. But we’re not.
10 Listen to women of colour. Everything bad that happened on the internet happened to them first.
11 Think of your personal data as nude selfies.
19 Take the piss. Humour is a weapon.
When you're ready to wean yourself off the broligarchy, here is a list of digital services you can consider.
Just because they're based in Europe doesn't mean they will serve your purpose. As always, Caveat Emptor, buyer beware. And if you can use it for free, beware even more. Do your homework.
Sarah Kenzior wrote this almost exactly eight years ago, and a lot of it resonates even harder this year.
"You may be wondering why I am writing a letter to Americans in a Dutch news outlet. It is because I do not trust the US outlets to remain free, and believe that many are already compromised."
Select your news sources carefully, and
PAY FOR YOUR NEWS.
"Fortunately, not every service out there is trying to monetize your personal data, and many offerings are just as good (if not often better) as their commercial or ad-supported rivals."
More alternatives to popular apps that can help reclaim your online life from billionaires and surveillance
It's easy to remember Carole Cadwalladr's term, "broligarchy" (see upthread).
TIL it has a technical term: big tech feudalism.
Reijer Passchier of Leiden University observes that "The power of big tech companies is eclipsing the sovereignty of the state."
He says it's not a matter of "taming" Big Tech: what's required is de-feudalising.
Expect calls for a separation of tech and state, soon.
As Bernie Sanders says (yes, on Fox):
"It’s not just the billionaire ownership and control over the economy and the media that should concern us. The uber-rich are also buying our government and undermining American democracy.
Billionaires who represent just .0005% of our population accounted for 18% of total campaign spending.
That is not democracy. That is not one person, one vote. That is not what this country is supposed to stand for."
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/sen-bernie-sanders-two-americas-people-vs-billionaires
@CelloMomOnCars
The #SCOTUS has been bought and gets most ruling wrong.
They said money is speech.
Money is not speech, it is volume.
It gives a few people the power to shout down everyone else.
#democracy is more than voting!
@mral @CelloMomOnCars we haven't really tried the voting part of "democracy", starting with the choose-only-one primaries, from a wide field of better options, the winner is the one with the largest following not one of the many supported by a majority. It doesn't have to be this way for either party, or just 2 parties, except the money likes to buy both sides. Ranked Choice isn't going to solve that, which is why the RCV lobby is so well-funded and attacks STAR or Approval grassroots efforts.
@enobacon keep in mind that the choose-only-one primaries are there as a solution to issues in the balloting system we normally use.
The primary process is effectively a weak way to get ranked choice voting to replace the one we use.
Unless we change our balloting system, we need the choose-only-one primaries to help voters organize their votes.
