You’re starting to question the moral values of Big Tech. You and your friends probably have a growing feeling of creepiness about the tech giants who have — like a poorly-acted villain — told you one thing, and given you another.
Society – all of us – was told by these rising tech giants that “Everybody’s doing it, it’s easy: just do it,” and even though the masses – again, all of us – were skeptical, also generally thought, “Okay, I may be the product… but I am in control.” Until, of course, you weren’t in control.
Big Tech have two business models: one is to exploit your private life for profit, the other to lock you into their products and services. Some even have both. Consequently, nearly everyone wants to leave Facebook – it’s just that nobody wants to leave it for Facebook 2.0. And that highlights the larger, deeper, and more menacing issue in digital society: that your digital civil rights are under constant, relentless attacks from Big-Tech.
That’s because Big Tech have a legally bound requirement to exploit you to maximize profit. They have been structured specifically to lock people up, to make it impossible to leave. Society’s technology genius is not lacking, its moral genius is.
Big Tech is rotten to the core, they’re maximizing shareholder value without values. And that has to change.
Counter to every attempt by Big Tech, you still do retain the control to switch away from platforms under their control. Leaving the harmful tech companies is a process of recognizing what is abusive in your relationship with them – and theirs with you; switching to something that aligns with your core values will bring you joy. If everyone used, bought, and shared ethical products, we would all be living in digital utopia.
Avoiding Big Tech that harms you is much easier when you know what you actually want.
Like most people, you probably want convenient products that allow you to participate in digital society, products where you are also respected and protected by default. And you probably recognize that the current tech giants will not — and cannot — provide that.
I created Purism to solve this giant problem. We are solving it. And with your support, we will advance the digital civil rights movement. One that changes technology for the better.
The steps it takes are pretty clear: and even though they are difficult, Purism is farther along than you may currently think. We have the momentum to realize our dreams, here is our model:
Step #1 is simple: avoid Big Tech in products and services.
Step #2 is to manufacture hardware without purposeful backdoors that exploit users, and therefore society.
Step #3 is to release all software source code under Free Software licenses, designed to protect and respect society
Step #4: Focus all development on values that better society, ensuring individual digital civil rights are fully respected.
And finally step #5, to release services that do not exploit, do not lock-in, and do not control people.
Doesn’t that sound like a really good business model in, and for, technology?
“Maximize Society’s Values.” — Todd Weaver, Purism SPC
sounds an awful lot better than the current Big Tech model,
“Harm People for Profit.” — Big-Tech.
This rotten core of locking people into products and booking them into an exploitative platform needs to become a thing of past regret.
Social purpose companies mean advancing social good first, returning the power to the people.
Decentralized protocols mean decentralized power, returning control to the people.
Free Software means freedoms that benefit society, returning control to the people.
Secure hardware means private data is kept private, returning control to the people.
And all this means any future product or service that you use or join must be from an organization that does social good, uses decentralized protocols, that advances freedom in software and security in hardware. Can you imagine how awesome society will be if technology does all that?
It’s within your power to help society – by avoiding Big Tech, by using products and services that respect your digital civil rights.
Thank you.
Learn more about Purism products that do all this.