FreeTube ─ Watch YouTube without ads, without login, and with private playlists.

https://freetubeapp.io

Article on Polish tech news site on how Streamyard screwed over our tiny not-for-profit (and, no doubt others) by automatically upgrading us to a plan at twice the price.

https://kontrabanda.net/r/aral-balkan-streamyard-kontrowersje/

Who rules the #AI age?

"we know big tech conrols the public sphere"

IIPP Professor Cecilia Rikap recently spoke on how #AI is shaping relationships among leading #BigTech corporations, and between corporations and states at the @oii.ox.ac.uk .

talk here: https://buff.ly/2G4SOE9

@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 #monopsony #uspol #ChokepointCapitalism #books #reading @bookstodon

Tech bros are living, breathing embodiments of the false authority fallacy; claiming that their professed understanding of basic logic qualifies them to reason expertly upon every conceivable topic while conveniently ignoring a fundamental maxim of their purported core area of expertise: garbage in, garbage out.

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.

Happy 10th anniversary to Spyware 2.0 – the video we released at the launch of Ind.ie (what is now Small Technology Foundation¹).

Have we learned any lessons in those ten years, I wonder.

https://vimeo.com/116656700

#spyware #SiliconValley #BigTech #technology #fascism #technoFascism #peopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism #surveillanceCapitalism

¹ https://small-tech.org

#FOSS is the great accomplice of #BigTech dominance, by not considering its impact on society and by generally not being produced sustainably. FOSS does not defend its market position, dumping itself on the market and leaving the rest to chance. The vultures know how to make good use of this. FOSS does not worry whether its customer segment - the #Commons - is reached, and evil players are kept out.

Big tech manages to win through ‘free’ in their delivery model, where FOSS sees itself losing.

Complaining about enshittification does belie a certain lack of awareness of always having been swimming in shit.

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

"Nextcloud challenges cloud powers with Hub 10 release"

The recent story by ZDNet dives into replacing the #BigTech SaaS with privacy-friendly all-in-one private cloud where you call the shots.

Read the article here:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/nextcloud-challenges-cloud-powers-with-hub-10-release/

We’re not going to get out of this simply by voting with our wallets, but still, we might at least try and hurt the fuckers in the only place they feel any pain…

https://www.buy-european-made.eu

(And don’t get me started on “European Values”. No, we don’t get a gold star while letting refugees drown off our coasts and being complicit in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. We’re just not fully fascist yet and might just avoid it… maybe. It’s a pretty fucking low bar.)

The Camera Panopticon

How did we end up in technofascism? Watch this talk I gave over a decade ago warning of the dangers of Silicon Valley and Big Tech and urging us to embrace alternatives.

https://small-tech.org/videos/the-camera-panopticon/

(Transcript available in English, Español, and Nederlands, thanks to the community.)

“Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about ‘selling data’)”

– Mozilla

;) ;)

(At least Mark Zuckerberg had the good grace to call us “dumb fucks” to our faces.)

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

Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge…

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-begins-turning-off-ublock-origin-and-other-extensions-in-edge/

It was of course a matter of time. Have a look at this post for alternative browsers:

https://graphics.social/@metin/112947624764737298

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

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.