City of Amsterdam takes important steps towards digital sovereignty:

digital sovereignty as condition in procurement;
data control, less cloud service dependency;
open, independent, non-US software;
new social media and communication strategy

#democracy #cloud #bigtech #socialmedia

https://www.amsterdam.nl/nieuws/nieuwsoverzicht/digitale-onafhankelijkheid/

@pluralistic I’m reading chapter 12 of Chokepoint Capitalism and it’s really sad to see how we are very far away from fair antitrust policies, especially now with an oligarchical government run by the Big Tech. It’s somehow disheartening.

#bigtech #monopoly #uspol #ChokepointCapitalism #books #reading @bookstodon

#DiscoElysium Litigator Launches $500 'Creative Immunity' Certs
https://isglitch.com/article/2025-03-12-disco-elysuim-litigator

Kampagne: Havefolket forlader tech-giganterne

https://rodoglund.dk/kampagne-havefolket-forlader-tech-giganterne-%f0%9f%a7%91%f0%9f%8c%be/

Hi, I’m Ellie.

I’ve jumped to Mastodon after realising (again) how toxic big tech is. Trump and Musk’s obsession with controlling social media sealed it—I miss when it was about connecting, not just a tool for the rich to twist public opinion.

I’ll post a little bit about politics (Carol Cadwalladr fan!) but also pretty pictures, my pet, and travel snaps. Looking forward to actual conversations—not just whatever the algorithm wants me to see.

Choose wisely!

#BigTech - the data vampires that harvests as much data about you as possible, with their opaque platform silos, black boxes, targeted advertisements, dark patterns and attention seeking algorithms?

Or #PostmarketOS - free, open source, driven by a community of enthusiasts who share a common goal: to promote a healthier and more sustainable society. And have some fun while doing it!

To all of you that are joining us at @Vivaldi , I would like to welcome you.

We know that many are looking for options away from Big Tech and we are happy many of you are choosing us.

We have been building browsers for a long time now. Many of us were at Opera. I co-founded Opera in 1995.

As Opera drifted in a bad direction, I co-founded Vivaldi to provide a real alternative to Big Tech and I believe we can play a very important role moving forward. Thanks for your support!

New on #TheFutureIsFederated

#PeerTube: the Fediverse’s decentralized video platform (part 1: first impressions)

https://blog.elenarossini.com/peertube-the-fediverses-decentralized-video-platform-part-1-first-impressions/

mentioning @Framasoft @peertube @fedihost@mstdn.social @fedihost@video.fedihost.co @paige @veronicaexplains @ewen @docpop @hikingdude

P.S.: this is the 20th article for The Future is Federated

Waking up to more deluge of crazy from the US, not only in #uspolitics but the crazies in #Bigtech. I'm almost ready to quit academia bc I'm so tired of all the #genai hype and bs. I didn't get into academia to endlessly sing the praises of text or clip art image generators. It was bad enough when learning analytics hit (what bs that was). I love human communication and collaboration, bring humans back to education! Why is everyone so under the #AI spell?

After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel. The oligopoly has won
—@cfenollosa

https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html

European democracy is not a bargaining chip. This needs to be clear in negotiations.

The EU's Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, & AI Act are instruments to offer counterweight.

Europe should not sell the democratic and regulatory instruments in a deal!

#democracy #bigtech #media #DSA #trump #musk

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-lawmakers-counter-tech-bro-washington-lobby-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk/

So Microsoft introduced Recall some time ago. Seemingly most people have never heard of it. It takes a picture of your screen every 5s, so you are able to search for what you did on your computer. Personally I can not think of many uses for this functionality and none that outweigh the privacy and security implications.

Would you care to enable such functionality on your computer?

As John Thornhill (FT) points out there has been a shift in the practice of music piracy: t'he pirates are no longer small groups of hackers but giant corporations with lobbying muscle'....

So, lets call the Artificial Intelligence business model what it is; theft & exploitation of others' property for private gain; if that sounds familiar, it because across the gig economy stealing (by under-paying & exploiting workers) is already business as usual; thievery & deceit!

Anything you say or do in Firefox may be used by Mozilla against you. You have the right to use a different browser. If you cannot find a browser that doesn’t fuck you over one way or another, one will not be provided for you because capitalism is working exactly as designed.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-of-use/

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/information-about-the-new-terms-of-use-and-updated-privacy/td-p/87735

I'm sorry, do I have this right - that Jitsi, the meeting platform specifically presented as an alternative for people who want to opt out of #Google, can now only be used IF YOU LOG IN WITH A FUCKING GOOGLE ACCOUNT!?

And the #tech world wonders why we hate their guts...

Cory Doctorow's (@pluralistic) blog post for today is a speech he gave last night at the University of Toronto, the annual Ursula Franklin Lecture at Innis College.

It's worth reading:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/

It connects the dots between anti-circumvention copyright laws like the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (and the Canadian copycat legislation) and the enshittification that ensues when Big Tech does ... well, practically anything. There's a specific example he uses that is horrifying. He also shows exactly how Big Tech has escaped what he identifies as the usual four factors for keeping the worst instincts of companies in check.

I agree with him that we should annul the anti-circumvention law on the books, and would go further in saying that we should explicitly enshrine in law the rights to alter, repair, remove etc. any functionality of products and services that we choose to use. I was one of the original 6,000 Canadians who submitted comments warning against the implementation of these restrictions to our government at the time, and my feelings in support of this are stronger than ever.

Give it a read.

Attached image: I think this is probably overdue.