Why is this important?

Part 1: Our Machines

Every day, our lives become more and more online. With big tech companies showing no interest in wanting to make any effort into improving the world, it has become increasingly important to take control of your online activity, not be at the will of corporations, and stay private and secure online. With the amount of money, power, and influence corporations have within society and the government, it's nearly impossible for them to be "good". Here are some of the most egregious and disturbing instances of corporations doing what they do best: making the world a worse place. This is not an all encompassing list, it is simply some examples/a cautionary tale as to what happens when greedy groups and people have too much power. Just because a specific group isn't mentioned doesn't mean they're innocent, and just because a specific issue isn't mentioned doesn't mean that I don't believe that it is important.

- Bo Burnham, artist, from That Funny Feeling off of Inside (Burnham)

Pollution

- Bill Gates, co-founder and current technical advisor of Microsoft - whose company's revenue grew almost 200% while their emissions grew almost 25% from 2020 to 2025 - who thinks climate change does not pose an existential threat to humanity, and who is named in the Epstein Files (Gates)

Climate change continues to make our world hotter, raise the sea levels, destroy entire countries, make our weather more extreme, threaten food supplies, destroy habitats, and lead society to it's end, while we do little to stop it (Union of Concerned Scientists, Nuccitelli). The lands home to the contries of Kiribati, Maldives, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Nauru, Fiji, and the Marshall Islands - including all their landscape, nature, culture, history, language, resources, and human, animal, and plant inhabitants - are at risk of being completely wiped off the face of the Earth due to our inaction over climate change, to the point where some have started making digital copies of their nation to preserve themselves (Active Sustainability, Fainu). Rising heat kills one person per minute (Carrington). We have plunged the globe into an era of global water bankruptcy (UN News). Over 15,000 species are already affected by climate change (IUCN). Around one million are threatened with extinction (UN). For some, it's already too late (Haddon, IFAW, Milman). We have a little over 3 years to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius (Climate Clock). That's to limit it to 1.5, not to prevent it from reaching 1.5. Global temperatures are expected to rise 2.3 to 2.5 degrees celsius (UN Environment Programme). Roughly a billion human deaths are expected if it reaches over 2 degrees, which governments are already preparing for (Banerji, Harvey). At 3 degrees, you're looking at the deaths of upwards of four billion people (Laville). None of that is to mention the impact on the plants and animals.

- Greta Thunberg, political and climate activist, speaking at the World Economic Forum to the global elite attendees (The Independent)

Things are getting worse at a pace that's that's faster than we are acting (Climate Action Tracker). We as a species continue to soar past climate deadlines, and we and all other species are feeling the effects (UN Environment Programme). 95% of all countries failed to submit UN climate pledges (Dunne). Just 100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions, just 32 are responsible for half, and billionares emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in an entire lifetime (Riley, Carrington, Thériault). As the species that caused the problem, we owe it to all the other living things on this planet to make it a place they can live in. As colonizers that took the land, we owe it to native plant, animal, and human populations to bring it back to what it once was. As residents of the one and only Earth and direct beneficiaries and losers of climate change, we are all at fault for the continued threat to all life due to our passivity.

Please note that "global warming" is an outdated term for climate change as a whole. Climate change includes so much more than just the planet warming (Harvey, Leiserowitz et al.).

- Saying used by many environmental activists; unknown origin

Big tech companies have a seemingly unending desire to destroy our planet and everything on it with their inaction on the climate. They account for 2 to 3 percent of the world's emissions (Navarro). Despite already lying about their impacts on the environment, companies like Google and Microsoft still continue to soar past their environmental goals (Turek, St. John, Microsoft). Even a company like Apple who markets themselves as environmentally conscious continues to release pointless revisions to their products that will inevitably become e-waste year after year and constantly show themselves to be against the right to repair, something that reduces waste and improves usability significantly (Dayaram). This has only gotten exponentially worse with the advent of AI (St. John). Data centers that pollute both the local and global environments continue to pop up at a rapidly increasing pace all across the world, making the air and water unbreathable and unusable while bringing our world and every species on it closer to a climate catastrophe (Abraham).

Genocide

- Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft's AI division - which still actively arms the Israeli government in their genocide - responding to a now fired pro-Palestinian employee (Singh)

Google and Amazon have a deal with the Israeli government called Project Nimbus in which they provide cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to assist the Zionist regime in its genocide (Roscoe). Google's YouTube helped air ads promoting misinformation on the blockade induced famine in Gaza (Poulson and Fang). Microsoft provides their cloud computing platform Azure to the IDF and has cancelled the email address of International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan for his official investigative work on Israel's war crimes (Mednick et al., Quell). Google and Microsoft fire employees for their opposition and activism towards ending their company's support of the Palestinian genocide (Kerr, O'Brien). Facebook helped to propagate the Rohingya genocide in/by Myanmar and helps to propagate the Gaza genocide by allowing ads and crowdfunding for IDF drones and illegal Israeli settlements (Amnesty International, Bhuiyan, Magee).

War

- Alex Karp, co-founder of US and Israeli government contracted surveillance database company Palantir that works with other big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and NVIDIA (Dowd)

Groups including Google, Palantir, Amazon, and formerly Anthropic work with the US Department of Defense/War under Project Maven, in which they provide cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence and machine learning to them (Griffiths, Jeans and Stone). Google has repeatedly partnered with the US government, including the military and ICE, in order to "get their work done" (Google, Cox, Gault). That "work" consists of using the people's tax dollars to kill a countless number of civilians from all across the world while we reap the benefits of repossessing their oil (Wikipedia, Wikipedia). They partner with multiple military tech companies, including Palantir and Lockheed Martin (Google, No Tech For Apartheid). Microsoft also works with the US Military and ICE, including the same software they lease to Israel (Wong, Microsoft). Even streaming services like Spotify participate in the military-industrial complex by showing ICE recruitment ads to their users (Mier).

Lobbying

- Katie Harbath - former director of public policy for global elections at Meta, social media legislation advisor, Founder and CEO of social media legislation consulting firm Anchor Change - despite the fact that people are growing less comfortable with AI in society (Bosa and Wu)

Tech companies are some of the biggest lobbyists out there. Google ($16,540,000 in 2025), Amazon ($18,865,000 in 2025), Microsoft ($10,105,000 in 2025), Apple ($10,000,000 in 2025), and more are all among the companies who have given the most amount of money to US politicians through PACs and other means to have their interests represented in the government over the politician's own constituents (OpenSecrets). This results in more corrupt system where money holds the power rather than the people (Nazur). This is a problem across US party lines; neither party serves anyone other than greed (Integrity Index).

Privacy

- Larry Ellison, co-founder and current CTO/executive chairman of the company Oracle - partial owner of TikTok in the US, maintainer of the Java programming language, and owner of a large amount of all corporate infrastructure - who is the 6th richest person, owner of an entire island of Hawai'i, father of the founder and CEO of Paramount Skydance - which will soon also own Warner Bros. Discovery - and friend of the Israeli Military, who offered a board seat at his company to Benjamin Netanyahu (Ma)

As we spend more time online, it is becoming increasingly crucial to maintain a sense of internet privacy. Privacy is important as it can increase your digital security, prevent governments and companies from knowing more about you than you do about yourself, increase your control over your devices, and more (National Cybersecurity Alliance, Aragon et al). Think about all the times you've gotten ads served to you about things you were suspiciously just searching up on an unreleated platform or were talking about with a friend. I can say with almost 100% certainty that somewhere out on the internet (possibly including the dark or deep web) that your information is being made available by hackers, leakers, or other malicious entities. It is a misconception that wanting to increase your internet privacy means you "have something to hide". If you have nothing to hide, would it not worry you if there was a camera in your bedroom (or your street), watching your every move? It is perfectly reasonable to not want actors who have no business knowing about you to not know about you (Aragon et al).

With that being said, nothing you do in the internet age using products by big business is private. All of your information is tracked and used to serve ads (Graham and Elias). Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple routinely coordinate with the National Security Agency (NSA) (Gleenwald and MacAskill). Recently, the United States federal government has been buying this data to spy into the lives of it's citizens (ACLU, Whittaker). Within the past decade, there has been a 770% increase in user data requests to big tech from the US government (Nazzaro). Meta waitied to launch facial recognitition in their camera glasses until the political envoirnment was in a place where the "civil society groups that [they] would expect to attack [them] would have their resources focused on other concerns" (Hill et al.). There's too many privacy issues to even begin to list for each of these companies, to the point where Google and Meta each have a Wikipedia page dedicated to their privacy issues. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia). Because of this, it is crucial you find more private alternatives while being aware of privacy in general (which will be covered on this site).

All that data they collect about us is also at risk of being leaked, hacked, or sold. Any service you use collects data about you to sell to advertisers and governments. Both the services and advertisers are at risk of data breaches. For example, a big ad company called Gravy Analytics recently had a massive data breach that exposed millions of users (possibly including you). Gravy and companies like them already sell the information they gather about you to various sources, like location data to the US government - including ICE (Cox, Whittaker).

Labor

- Jeff Bezos, founder and former CEO of Amazon and the worlds 4th richest person - whose company has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to their bad treatment of worker's unions (Döpfner)

Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Samsung benefit from the forced labor and persecution of the Uyghur minority in/by China (ASPI, Leibold). Google, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Dell, Samsung, Sony, and more have all been accused of utilizing child labor (Mosebo, Amnesty International). Companies including Amazon, Meta, Apple, and much more are known for their poor treatment of their workers and the subsequent unions (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia).

Surveillance

- Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock Safety - whose cameras can be hacked and who does share data - who thinks efforts to stop their company are "terroristic", in an email to a police chief released by the city (Staunton, Virginia)

The extent of mass surveillance has been growing exponentially in recent years. Flock Safety cameras are everywhere. They're supposed to be used for law enforcement and ICE, but they are extremely insecure and publicly viewable with the right tools (Jordan, Jordan, Koebler). To see a map of known Flock cameras, check DeFlock - who Flock's CEO has called "terroristic" (Brewster). There are some near your home, and likely more on the way. Before the controversial 2026 Super Bowl commercial, Amazon's Ring doorbells also worked with Flock, culminating in an increasingly worrying and popular surveillance state (AP, Koebler). They also manipulate local governments in to going into contracts with them in ways that benefit the city council members and the company alone, without any citizen input. This includes a city council member quitting his position after being hired by Flock immediately after he voted yes on a contract with the company or when a mayor was hired by them while actively serving as the mayor (Rossmann).

- Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal as well as US and Israeli government contracted surveillance database company Palantir - that works with other big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and NVIDIA - who funded the political campaign for many prominent political figures and groups - including JD Vance and companies like OpenAI and Discord's former age verifier - when asked if the human race should continue to survive (Interesting Times)

Palantir is a company that's been on the rise and in the news a lot lately, yet no one seems to know why. Maybe it's their insane stock prices (Yahoo Finance, Trefis Team). Maybe it's their confusing business model founded on the surveillance of civilians (Haskins). Maybe it's that they work with other big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and more (Rosenberg, Haselton, NVIDIA). Maybe it's that one of their CEOs Peter Thiel doesn't think the human race should continue on (Interesting Times). Maybe it's the other CEO Alex Karp that is known for always seeming to be high. Maybe it's them embracing the surveillance state with their very existence just to appease shareholders in general. Hard to say. Regardless, know that you are almost never alone. Someone could always be watching and/or listening, whether it be a corporation, a government, or a person and whether it be online or in real life.

Artifical Intelligence

- Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT - who thinks the company should be like a religion, allegedly raped his sister, had a whistleblower die under suspicious circumstances, and is "a pathological liar, a manipulative abuser, and his own threat to humanity" (ControlAI)

Big tech has shown that they will knowingly advance AI regardless of any possible ecological or societal issues it triggers (Stanton). It may seem convenient and harmless, but studies show reliance on AI can actually decrease your brain activity and make you dumber (Kosmyna et al.). AI has been linked to cases of chatbot-induced psychosis (Caridad). It is a major, to say the least, threat to all creative and artistic people (Saliba and Cho). AI is being used "on an industrial scale" for fraud and scams (Down, Coffeezilla). Google has removed any promise that they won't use AI to inflict harm (Tucker). When AI is used in legal environments, it can lead to errors resulting in the prolonged jailing of innocent people (Henson). Twitter/X's AI chatbot Grok has repeatedly referred to itself as "MechaHitler", said Adolf Hitler is the "best suited to deal with [the] problem" of Jewish people, and has generated child porn right on the open web for all to see at it's user's requests (Hagen et al., Robins-Early). OpenAI had a whistleblower named Suchir Balaji commit suicide with 2 gunshots to the head after he testified against the company in an interview with the New York Times, but before he could formally testify. There are numerous other abnormalities about the case (O'Brien, White, Metz, Epoch Philosophy)

Art

- Game developer Nintendo, who has taken legal/financial action against everyone from a small Costa Rican supermarket to YouTubers to emulators, emulators, and more emulators in addition to much more, on people's ability to preserve and enjoy video games via emulators for games that the company isn't even selling anymore (Lao)

Tech companies have a history of suppressing, discrediting, and replacing art and the artists who make it. Artists are frequently suppressed and censored for their views or methods on social media platforms (Don't Delete Art). Recently, corporations have started outsourcing human creativity with AI (Zhao). Often, companies that own vast media empires don't do their due diligence to preserve and protect the media that only they can legally produce and sell. Examples of this include the deletion of Discovery TV content you already paid for off your Sony PlayStation console, Nintendo's repeated relaxed attitude towards preserving their own games but violent attitude towards others doing it for them, the general shying away from physical media and towards subscription models, Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls, and more (Medina, Bandit, Wikipedia, Alvi, Davies, GOG). Big tech discredited, commodified, and delegitimized art while hurting the environment with NFTs (Torres, Zizi, Garnett et al.). OpenAI's Sora threatened creativity and creative autonomy before it was shut down (Lee and White, Brumfiel). Not only do companies not care enough to preserve the art they own, but they go out of their way to target people who take matters into their own hands (Sued by Nintendo, Bailey). Corporate consolidation and licensing agreements threaten existing and future media (González, Roosevelt Institute, Gupta). AI companies utilize destructive methods to collect as much data as possible to help train their models, like with Anthropic's Project Panama (Schaffer et al.).

- Mark Hosler, co-founder of the anti-copyright and anti-corporate experimental band Negativland, in a letter to Congress (cameron)

Companies allow the governments of the world to invade the content and art we see and enjoy online on their platforms. Memetic warfare is the utilization of memes as propoganda in order to influence the masses, categorized as a form of psychological warfare, which is said to be a large part of the current political landscape. The United States is currently involved in "exploit[ing] the psychological vulnerabilities of hostile forces to create fear, confusion, and paralysis, thus undermining their morale and fighting spirit" via memes (McBride). Know that nothing is sacred when it comes to your attention, even a thing that seems as innocent as memes.

ID Verification Laws

- Discord announcing all users will need to verify their age in order to continue using the service as before (Discord)

Recently, multiple states, countries, and companies have either introduced or have started working towards ID verification rules that would require you to provide your ID before being able to participate in the web. Mandatory ID verification laws are a massive threat as they give governments and companies the tools to enable censorship, to control what you can and can't see or do, and to track you across the web more than they already do. They basically remove online privacy as a possibility, since everything you do online will be tied to your government identity. They increase your risk of identity theft as companies constantly suffer data breaches, leaks, and hacks (Roach). In the specific case of them restricting minors, this means minors can no longer communicate on a mass scale, express their thoughts and opinions about issues, have their voices heard, or participate in today's culture. This is even even more worrying when you add the fact that companies already know more about you than you do about yourself. Now they'll be able to link your digital identity, with all the data they have about you, to your actual identity. Further consider the combination between ID verification laws, the surveillance state, the nonexistance of digital privacy, increasing efforts by governments to censor the internet, and the US's increasing interest in compiling databases of it's citizens who could be problematic (Vesteinsson and Baker, Wise, Martin, Pell et al.). In summary, they mean the days of being private and secure on the internet will be over, as your internet activity and all the data people collect about us will be directly tied to your government ID. Because of this, it is crucial you find more alternatives without verification while being aware of the incoming laws/policies in general (which will be covered on this site).

Australia has already implemented a ban on social media for those under 16, banning everything from Instagram to even streaming like YouTube and Twitch. Other countries are following suit (McGuirk). The US federal government is one of those countries eagerly attempting to pass age verification laws, with the proposed legislation undergoing many transformations and name changes along the way. Most recently, the KIDS Act has been introduced. On top of the standard criteria for an age verification bill, Section 234 says that people under the age of 13 will be unable to use messaging features (Congress). This could mean that if you choose to not verify your age on online platforms, your access to things like DMs could be revoked. It passed the committee on May 5, 2026, meaning it is waiting for its day in the House (Roth). Individual states like Texas and California are also trying to implement or have already implemented their own versions of the laws. Texas Senate Bill 2420, which blocks the downloading of any and all apps without first verifying your identity, would have already gone into affect if it wasn't federally blocked by a judge after Attorney General Ken Paxton was sued by Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (Texas, Nguyen and Simpson, Vasquez). California's Assembly Bill Number 1043 will go into affect on July 1st, 2027 and will require all operating systems and app stores to provide age verification systems (California, Tsukayama, Yee).

Apple has already rolled out verification tools worldwide (Perez). Meta has spent over 2 billion dollars towards getting ID verification laws on the books (Costa). Even Linux users aren't safe (Rudra, Allan). Roblox has already implemented ID verification (Gilbert). Discord recently had a leak of 70,000 ID photos (Chia). Just four months later, they decided to begin to roll out "Teen-by-Default" settings to all users unless you can prove your age with an ID, facial scan, or if their "age inference model" deems you to be an adult (Discord). When hackers investigated into Persona - the age checker invested in by Peter Thiel that's used for platforms like OpenAI, Roblox, and, formerly, Discord - they found the code for the frontend on US government servers, implying collaboration (Open Rights Group, Baes, Owen). This is all even scarier when combined with the fact that Google will soon ban installing apps from outside of Google Play on Android and will require app developers to verify their ID with Google in order to be able to develop apps on the platform (Google). This initially would've gone into effect at the start of 2026, but after consumer backlash they pretended to walk back the change (Google). Despite claims that Android is going to be free going in to the future fueled by Google's misleading blog post, the change will go in to affect starting in September of 2026 (Keep Android Open). It was just recently announced that now in order to be able to install non-Play apps on your device, you'll need to go through a long and convoluted process involving a one day waiting period (Google, Keep Android Open, Sharma). Not only is this a massive concern for user freedom and privacy, this would also mean it would be impossible to not support Google as a company - which is incredibly worrying considering their previously explored ethical failures.

Right to Repair

- Devin Hartline, senior fellow at a conservative think tank's Forum for Intellectual Property and anti-right to repair advocate, speaking to Congress (Congress)

The right to repair is the legal right and movement for consumers to be able to repair and modify products that they purchased. This leads to a reduction in e-waste, as instead of throwing away devices you can simply upgrade or repair them - thus helping the environment. It also has the benefit of giving you control over your device, as you can choose what repairs or modifications you do or don't do and how you do them. It prevents things like forcing you to pay for expensive first-party repairs or bricking your device. Companies shouldn't have the right to tell you what you can and can't do with your own product that you paid for, yet they consistantly show themselves to be against the movement. It shouldn't be possible for tech companies to leave a device you paid for unusable like with Spotify's Car Thing or to make it difficult to repair/modify your own devices for no reason (other than to make a profit when you pay them to repair it) (Rogers, Thompson, Kim). Corporations go as far as advocating and lobbying against the right in court (Roth, Green).

Social Impact

- Elon Musk - world's richest person, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, CTO of Twitter/X's parent corporation, former senior advisor to the President of the United States, founder and former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), co-founder of PayPal, and notorious bigot - implying that his Nazi supporting and child porn-posting AI Grok will some day "rule" (Ray)

Companies profit off of LGBTQ+ pride while doing little to actually empower those communities, in what is known as rainbow capitalism (Murray, GLAAD). Social media services supress the voices of their black users (Wiltz). Platforms often do little to combat misinformation, leading to an influx in popularity of pseudoscience and hateful rhetoric - going as far as outsourcing fact checking and content moderation to their own users (Meta, Allen et al., Bond, Amnesty International, Duffy). Social media continues to lead to addiction and disrupt existing positive social orders (Hillard, Mulugeta, Wortham). Companies continue to cut back on practices that ensure people of all backgrounds have a fair shot while promoting diversity and inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups (Murray and Bohannon). Platforms allow and even themselves post hateful rhetoric against marginalized communities, like with Twitter/X's AI chatbot Grok repeatedly referring to itself as "MechaHitler" and saying that Adolf Hitler is the "best suited to deal with [the] problem" of Jewish people (Dioum, Hagen et al.).

Secret Society

- Jeffery Epstein, the New York Financeer, in an email to the billionare cousin of the current governor of Illinois, Tom Pritzker (Bouris)

Many tech CEOs are named in the Epstein files, including but not limited to Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Tim Cook, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman (Ruiz, Butts). The Epstein class used their influence to create what 4chan has become today and has been involved in it since (Lawler, Snider, Jones, Winter et al.). Epstein used his influence and relationship with billionare and former Victoria's Secret chief Lex Wexner to spread his debauchary to young women, so it is plausible to theorize that something similar could've happened with social media and tech CEOs (Grady, Steel et al., Wikipedia, Magee). Even past Epstein, they live in a seperate world. Sam Altman met his husband "in Peter Thiel's hot tub at 3 a.m." (the whole Personal Life section on Sam Altman's Wikipedia page is very interesting) (Hagey).

Control

- Jen-Hsun Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, 8th richest person, on people who are against using AI

If you decide to switch from corporation-owned services, you will realize that, lots of the time, the non-billionaire-backed alternatives are a lot better. Often, the most successful products are claimed to be the best, simply because they have the most users or rake in the most cash. This is often not true, especially when one service becomes so required in modern society that the owners can make it as unusable and as profitable as possible by limiting user's control and ignoring their wants (a monopoly). Not only does switching to non-corporate platforms leave you more ethically sound, but it also allows you to do things like block ads and increase your privacy. When you switch to products that actually care about their users and their experience, it's hard to go back.

Part 2: The Machine

Before reading her quote this page, it had been a while since you've heard or thought much on Greta Thunberg, hadn't it? Remember, the Swedish activist known for her young age and opposition towards climate change? Famous for her "How dare you!" sound bite at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit? Surely you haven't forgotten about her or the impending doom this planet faces between all the doomscrolling, right? Well she certainly hasn't. Something has changed with Thunberg, though, specifically with how the media covers her. It wasn't her goals or her career or her love live that changed the media, and therefore the public's, perception of her, but instead it was the very thing that brought her to the spotlight: her activism. She uncovered that the same thing caused the climate crisis, the Gaza genocide, the military industrial complex, the rise of AI, the fall of privacy, any of the other issues I cover on this site, and much of the other problems facing the world en masse today: the systems in place (Flakin).

- Greta Thunberg, referring to capitalism, from her book "The Climate Book" (Thunberg)

Thunberg hasn't gone anywhere. Instead, she's shifted her focus to the oppression at the hands of the powerful in general. The exact CEOs and billon-dollar corporations I just spent over 4,000 words hating on. She used to be a favorite of the media, now shes barely brought up. If she is brought up, it's either talking about her in a negative light and/or talking about one of her most recent endeavours supplying aid directly to the people of Palestine, and being promptly kidnapped by Israel in response (Flakin). I had a hard time finding quotes for this section due to the amount of hatred towards her that seems to permeate through all news sources; I eventually just had to check out her book for myself at the library. It's time we shift to the real problems of society, too.

- Unknown

The systems in place have failed us. The companies I covered aren't doing all this evil in spite of the world, they're being rewarded by the world in doing them. They are incentivized to destroy, kill, and profit while being discouraged from doing anything good unless it can get them some good press or an award. This is a struggle as old as time; weaker people being disenfranchized by more powerful people while being told to hate whatever marginalized group it is that era. The only difference is now we have all the scientific innovation we could ask for, yet when it tells us very clearly what's going to happen and what's at stake, we ignore it. The people at the top only get richer and richer while the people at the bottom and young people face the end of it all. We continue to use the things they sell to us without caring about what other uses the tech and money is going to. If we want to stand a chance at saving our one and only planet while the rich seek to escape it by fucking off to Mars, it will take all of us to realize that us the rich and powerful people and systems - along with the politicians from all sides they pay off - are the common enemy to our salvation. There isn't one bad party, one bad politican, one bad CEO, or one bad company, but there is one system.

For more information, see dj8ngo's Political Action Toolkit and this resource collection.

- Greta Thunberg from her book "The Climate Book" (Thunberg)

Part 3: New Luddites

- Eric Schmidt, Former Chief Executive of Google, speaking on behalf of the company - which actively arms the genocide of the Palestinian people, participates in the destruction of out planet via climate change, and helps the US military and ICE "get their work done" (Auchard)

Yeah, we can tell, Schmidt. In summary, if you add up the word counts of Meta's six (general, censorship, privacy, unions, content management, real-name policy), Apple's five (general, environment, censorship, unions, taxes), Amazon's three (general, unions, taxes), Google's three (general, privacy, censorship), Microsoft's, Netflix's, and Spotify's criticism pages on Wikipedia, you get a (very rough) grand total of over 125,000 words (and there are likely more pages I didn't find). That would be about 500 pages in a standard book, or 14 hours of an audiobook.

- Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR - now owned by Meta - and military contractor Anduril - that creates autonomous killing drones and missiles while working with Google and the US government - when asked where he draws the ethical lines with his company's actions and what they won't do (Web Summit)

If it wasn't obvious already, corporations have no guiding ethics. They'll often claim they follow fancy sounding goals like "building for everyone" while arming a genocide, "protect[ing] fundamental rights" while using child labor, or generic support of diversity while actively cutting back on support for LGBTQ+ individuals and profiting off their inclusion via pride (Google, Microsoft, Murray, Peralta). They are not beholden to the morals they avoid, the governments they pay off, or the people they trample - they are purely at the will of them and the people and groups around them's greed. The companies we are forced to involve ourselves with constantly couldn't care less about anything you care about. As long as they're making a buck, they (and by extension, the governments of the world) don't care. How can we trust organizations founded on principals of wealth and power with the control of the products and services we use everyday?

- Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook (which enabled a genocide in Myanmar), Meta (which currently sells invasive constantly watching glasses with cameras), 5th richest person, whose biggest regret is competing on the fencing team in high school rather than wrestling (Levy)

Hopefully now you can see that you should first assume a corporation is evil and prove that they're good rather than assuming they're good and proving they're evil. Whether they are helping kill our planet, destroying local communities, arming genocides, suppressing activists, fueling the military-industrial complex, bringing about the AI apocalypse, eroding everyone's privacy, making greed the primary motivator of the world, enshittifying, or depriving us of the world that could've been, corporations - and the systems that allow them to exist - do not care about you. It's time you stop caring about them by ceasing to give them any more of your time, money, effort, attention, clicks, or data.

- Pichai Sundararajan, CEO of Google - whose company's carbon emissions grew 48% in the last five years - discussing the environment (Clifford)

It may seem like there's nothing you can do, but we, the workers and consumers, have the power and the responsibility to change the world for the better. Other than revolting, showing you don't support the way things are going by not supporting the products, services, and companies rooting for our downfall is just about the best we can do. By ceasing to use their platforms, we can create change. This is not a hopeless situation; boycotts do work (Ethical Consumer). By acknowledging and then hopefully defeating the pain and suffering corporations and systems can, will, and do cause, we can be a more ethical, empathetic, and thoughtful society and people.

- Wendell Berry, environmental activist and farmer, from "Life is a Miracle" (Berry)

Without further ado, lets get into what you're likely here for: how to block ads and increase privacy.