Big Tech

Why I Confronted Nancy Mace

November 26, 2024 Evan Greer, Touch Grass. Resist! Anti-fascism, Big Tech, Nancy Mace, Transgender Rights, Washington DC

On Thursday of last week, I was tossed out of a tech conference in Washington, DC because I stood up and spoke out against a vile bigot––and sitting member of Congress––who had been invited to speak. I would do it again. I want to be clear that the goal of my protest wasn’t to convince haters to stop spreading hate. It was to spark a conversation among tech policy advocates and philanthropists about what our strategy is going into the next four years. Will we cozy up to bigots, authoritarians, and wannabe fascists who have goals that are incompatible with basic human rights, just because they pretend to be “against Big Tech”?

Venezuela In The Crosshairs Of Technological Imperialism

September 5, 2024 Misión Verdad Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Big Tech, Capitalism, Democracy, Elon Musk, Freedom of Expression, Plutocracy, Social Media, Technology, US Imperialism, Venezuela, X

In August, Venezuela’s re-elected president, Nicolás Maduro, signed a decree blocking access to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for 10 days. President Maduro said of its owner, tycoon Elon Musk, “He has violated the rules by inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation among Venezuelans, and has violated all Venezuelan laws.” Musk, who also owns the Starlink satellite broadband network, expressed his support for the far-right Venezuelan opposition and insulted the president, which is a sign of the determination of the new global elites to carry out regime change in Venezuela. This action was accompanied by other attempts implemented through various technological platforms such as Apple, Google, and Meta.

How US Big Tech Monopolies Colonized The World: Welcome To Neo-Feudalism

August 19, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Amazon, Apple, Big Tech, Capitalism, China, Facebook, Feudalism, Google, Instagram, Microsoft, Silicon Valley, Social Media, Socialism, Yanis Varoufakis, YouTube

US Big Tech corporations have essentially colonized the world. In almost every country on Earth, the digital infrastructure upon which the modern economy was built is owned and controlled by a small handful of monopolies, based largely in Silicon Valley. This system is looking more and more like neo-feudalism. Just as the feudal lords of medieval Europe owned all of the land and turned almost everyone else into serfs, who broke their backs producing food for their masters, the US Big Tech monopolies of the 21st century act as corporate feudal lords, controlling all of the digital land upon which the digital economy is based.

World Of Warcraft Developers Form Blizzard’s Largest, Most Inclusive Union

July 27, 2024 Ash Parrish, The Verge. Organize! Big Tech, Blizzard, Games, Microsoft, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on World of Warcraft have voted to form a union. The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, formed with the assistance of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), is composed of employees across every department, including designers, engineers, artists, producers, and more. Together, they have formed the largest wall-to-wall union — or a union inclusive of multiple departments and disciplines — at Microsoft. This news comes less than a week after the formation of the Bethesda Game Studios union, which, at the time of the announcement, was itself the largest wall-to-wall Microsoft union.

Technocapitalism: Our Dystopian Present—And Future?

April 20, 2024 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Big Tech, Capitalism, Dystopia, Science and technology

We are living through an incipient technological revolution. AI, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, commercial space travel, and other innovations are rapidly transforming everything from the workplace to the financial architecture of the global economy. While many of these technologies hold vast potential to benefit the social good, the multinational corporations and financial oligarchy that drive innovation and own its products are solely motivated by private profit. The consequences are unfolding all around us. As technology and the power of the oligarchy advances, the misery and disenfranchisement of the majority grows.

CHIPS Ahoy For Stock Buybacks R Us!

March 27, 2024 Les Leopold, Scheer Post. Educate! Big Tech, Government Subsidies, Intel, Stock Buybacks, Worker Rights

Intel, the largest chip maker in America, with 2023 revenues of $54 billion, has just been awarded an $8.5 billion grant from the federal CHIPS and Science Act, plus $11 billion in favorable loans. In addition to badly needed microchips, Intel produces totally useless stock buybacks. On its website the company proudly proclaims to have spent $152 billion on stock buybacks since 1990. That’s not a typo — $152,000,000,000. Which is why I call it Stock Buybacks Я Us. Intel took $152 billion of its revenues, some portion of which could have been used for R&D and building new microchip facilities in the U.S.

Global Censorship In The Name Of Democracy

March 23, 2024 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. Educate! Big Tech, Media, Propaganda, US coups, USAID

A report from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) outlines how the government agency has been encouraging governments, tech platforms, establishment media outlets and advertisers to work together to censor huge swaths of the Internet. The 97-page “disinformation primer,” obtained by conservative firm America First Legal under the Freedom of Information Act, purports to be fighting fake news. However, much of the organization’s focus appears to be on preventing individuals from finding information online that challenges official narratives and leads to increased questioning of the system more generally.

US TikTok Ban Aims To Weaken China And Protect Tech Monopolies

March 19, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Big Tech, China, Congress, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Monopolies, New Cold War, Technology, Tesla

The US government has for years threatened to ban TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps in the country. It’s now looking like this might actually happen. This March, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”. This bill states that it “prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)”. It passed with an overwhelming majority of 352 votes in favor and just 65 votes against.

Adidas Exposed By Impostors At Tech Conference

November 19, 2023 The Yes Men. Resist! Adidas, Big Tech, Worker Rights, Yes Men

This Wednesday, an "adidas executive" named "Aristide Feldholt" (actually Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men) announced to a huge, standing-room-only crowd at Web Summit — the self-described "largest tech conference in the world" — that adidas would reward tens of thousands of underpaid sweatshop workers, many of whom are owed significant backpay and severance by letting them frolic in a deeply weird VR world called the "adiVerse," paying for it with a cryptocurrency generated by a tiny chip implanted into their bodies. "Aristide" was joined onstage by the multi-platinum "DJ Marshmello" (actually Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men), who dropped his new single, "All Day I Dream (About Back Pay)."

The Google Employee Who Helped Edward Snowden In Hong Kong

June 18, 2023 Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian. Educate! Big Tech, China, Edward Snowden, Google, Hong Kong, Surveillance

Early on the morning of 10 June 2013, Hong Kong time, the journalist Glenn Greenwald and film-maker Laura Poitras published on the Guardian site a video revealing the identity of the NSA whistleblower behind one of the most damning leaks in modern history. It began: “My name is Ed Snowden.” William Fitzgerald, then a 27-year-old policy employee at Google, knew he wanted to help. But he didn’t yet know how. Snowden was arguably the most wanted man in the world. The confidential documents he shared with Greenwald, Poitras and the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill detailed a sweeping US government surveillance program that was global in reach and involved some of the world’s best known tech companies.

Flexible Work Without Exploitation

March 1, 2023 Jennifer Sherer and Margaret Poydock, Economic Policy Institute. Create! Big Tech, Gig Economy, Regulations, Worker Rights and Jobs

Digital platform companies like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash are waging increasingly aggressive campaigns to erode long-standing labor rights and consumer protections in states across the country. Though they rely on the labor of millions of workers to provide their services, platform companies have established a business model on the premise that they employ no one. This business model has been built by denying workers fundamental rights and protections through outright refusal to follow existing laws, widespread misclassification of workers as “independent contractors,” payment of subminimum wages, and shifting of primary risks and costs of doing business onto individual workers, consumers, and public safety net programs.

Tech Layoffs Are About Punishing Workers And Driving Down Wages

February 16, 2023 Rose Lemlich, Left Voice Resist! Alphabet, Big Tech, Google, Tech Workers, Worker Rights and Jobs

In January, amid mass layoffs across the tech industry, Google laid off 6 percent of its workforce, or about 12,000 workers. In protest, dozens of tech workers crowded the sidewalk outside of Google’s Chelsea offices on February 2, sharing stories of laid-off coworkers and urging each other to join the union. The protest took place while executives at Alphabet (Google’s parent company) were on an earnings call with investors, announcing billions in profits. The workers highlighted the cruelty of how workers were told they’d lost their jobs. One anonymous worker shared that they were laid off via email while eating breakfast in the office.

We Need A New Approach To Giant Tech Firms Like Google

December 1, 2022 Lynn Parramore, Institute For New Economic Thinking. Create! Antitrust, Big Tech, Google, Media

Since the 1970s, economists buying into the Chicago School of Antitrust have waved off the dangers of lax antitrust policies, professing that “the market” would sort out issues of competition and punish companies that abuse size and power. The Chicagoans’ narrow focus on direct consumer costs as the sole measure of harm didn’t consider the impact of consolidation on small businesses, start-ups, workers, or, for that matter, democratic norms. Nor did it raise red flags for tech platforms that were touted as “free” for users (while monetizing our attention and personal data). A growing number of critics argue that these basic assumptions are both wrong and outdated, as evidenced by the fact that in many industries, particularly technology, companies have been growing to gargantuan proportions and, as anybody who owns a smartphone is painfully aware, they seem free to gobble competitors, hinder innovation, and serve up crappy, overpriced products.

Former Israeli Spies Work Top Jobs At Google, Facebook And Microsoft

November 1, 2022 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. Educate! Big Tech, Facebook, Google, Israel, Media, Meta, Microsoft, Palestine

A MintPress study has found that hundreds of former agents of the notorious Israeli spying organization, Unit 8200, have attained positions of influence in many of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. The Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Unit 8200 is infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population, amassing kompromat on individuals for the purposes of blackmail and extortion. Spying on the world’s rich and famous, Unit 8200 hit the headlines last year, after the Pegasus scandal broke. Former Unit 8200 officers designed and implemented software that spied on tens of thousands of politicians and likely aided in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

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