Long Term Collective Solutions

We are in desperate need of a more equitable, human centered tech ecosystem. This can not happen until the culture around these technologies changes. This likely requires better laws and regulations. It also likely requires much more diversity in the groups, ideas and incentives propelling this technology. If you're in politics you should be working with organizations (like those listed bellow) to draft legislation. If you're in tech you should be educating yourself (see bellow) and joining or organizing efforts within your institutions to ensure you're on the right side of history (For example, AI researcher Margaret Mitchell started the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team in Google's Research & Machine Intelligence group to do just that).

If you're not a law maker or tech industry employee, you are still a netizen and there's lots you can do to help address these issues. The challenge might seem vast and complex, but the direction is clear: better digital literacy, we have little agency without it. The key to improving our digital ecology is understanding how it all works and why it works the way it does. Surveillance capitalists have been successful, in part, by intentionally obscuring how they operate. The better our collective digital literacy the greater our chances. We need to normalize privacy and security. We need to demand user owned and controlled data. Governments need to prioritize user rights over corporate interests. We need to build consumer demand for products and platforms that reflect these values. So what can you start doing about it?

• Stay informed. Read news articles, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries (never forget to evaluate your sources). When you come across a headline from a reputable source, click it, read it, make sure you understand it. Read books on the subject. There are loads of amazing academics researching and publishing amazing work. I've linked to a few of my personal favorites (only because folks often ask, this is not an authoritative list) in the References and Resources page, but much more important than reading/listening/watching these is generally keeping up with the latest news on the subject.
• Spread the word. Actively share (credible) articles, podcasts, docs, books. Start conversations, talk about these issues on a regular basis with family and friends. Make work about these issues. Make these issues visible. Some folks might be tired of hearing about how messed up Facebook is, but so long as these platforms continue to grow it's imperative we keep talking about them. (I can't stress enough, in our present era of dis/misinformation it's incredibly important that you vet your sources, that you generally avoid reading anything you haven't previously confirmed is credible and that you avoid sharing anything until you're confident in it)
• Support organizations working on these issues. There's many different ways to slice these systemic problems and so there are various different organizations coming at it from different angles. These are a handful of groups I personally support (though again, this is not an authoritative list, do your research, support orgs that reflect your values): the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, The Center for Human Technology, The Algorithmic Justice League (I also run a small org working on these issues called netizen.org)
• Participate in taking action. in addition to spreading the word and donating to the organizations working on these issues, there are various other ways you can more actively participate, by joining protests and volunteering in their campaigns and other research efforts. For example, participate in Mozilla's surveys like their Internet Health Report or add their RegretsReporter extension to your browser to help identify issues with YouTube's recommendation system. Or join The Markup's Citizen Browser project to help track how disinformation travels across social media platforms.
• Use tech that reflects your values. It's important to recognize that the digital mess we're in is not our fault as netizens, this dystopia is being designed and engineered by a comparatively small group of companies that need to be held accountable. They often try to divert the issue and place the onus on us, claiming we have a "choice" whether or not to use their products. The truth is that it's very difficult to exist outside these platforms, at present they are deeply embedded in various aspects of our lives. That said, this doesn't mean we can't make small personal changes. There are loads of privacy tools out there and plenty of alternatives (some of which I mention in the "Alternatives to Surveillance Platforms" section of the Immediate Personal Solutions page). It's important to normalize the use of these alternatives and privacy enabling tools, even if you don't think you have "anything to hide", because so many others do.

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