Дата публикации: 04-08-2026 12:49:25

mostlysignssomeportents:ALTIf you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/04/technology-freedom-cooperative/#hrdagObviously, the non-American world has a digital sovereignty problem – Trump has means, motive and opportunity to order his tech companies to shut down any public official, large corporation, or individual who displeases him: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/#eyes-on-the-prizeBut Americans face the same digital sovereignty risk. America is a lawless place now, where a pliable Supreme Court and supine Congress have affirmed that “it’s not a crime if the president does it.” The same tech giants who sold out to Trump for tax breaks and protection from antitrust enforcement will happily disconnect any member of the American public, any American company, any American official who displeases Trump.It’s a strange irony that in this moment when so many of us are struggling to “de-Google” our lives, a forcible, sudden de-Googling amounts to a sort of digital death penalty:https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.htmlIn a world dominated by tech monopolies, duopolies and cartels, there’s every reason in the world to seek protection and insulation from these companies that are “too big to care” – and yet, the very same dominance that makes these companies such a danger also makes them indispensable.Take “ICE Block,” an iOS app that warns you if there’s an ICE thug hunting people like you in your vicinity, which might save you from being kidnapped, disappeared, sent to a concentration camp, forced into slave labor in El Salvador, or simply murdered. In order to protect its relationship with the Trump regime (and the tax breaks, monopoly power and tariff-free access to Chinese labor that that relationship guarantees), Apple declared ICE officers to be a protected class and then removed ICE Block from its App Store:https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-applyBig Tech is key to Trump’s pogroms. Without Oracle’s databases, Microsoft’s administrative tools, Amazon’s cloud, and Google’s location data, ICE would be frozen in place. Big Tech is the source of Americans’ risk from authoritarian oppression. That means that Americans cannot rely on Big Tech to protect them from that authoritarianism.Keep reading

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