Freaked out? Start here.
Introducing The Citizens' Techno-authoritarianism Fight Back Toolkit
Dear Citizen,
Even Elon’s own AI chatbot thinks that Donald Trump works for Russia now… with a little help from the UK. We know we need to get organized. This week’s edition of the Citizens Re-United is all about action - and a critical new tool to take it.
# ONE CLICK # RE-UNITE, RE-BUILD... RE-SOURCE(S)
Look: we know things look daunting. That’s why the Citizens is building a community of journalists, researchers, academics, artists, campaigners and citizens. There are only a few Tech Bros, and a lot of us.
This week we want to introduce our action center - an anti-Big Tech toolkit that answers the question: what can I do?
It turns out there's a lot:
- Educate: Understand how Big Tech got so Big! Explainers, articles and books that get to the heart of it.
- Practice: Small actions you can take to limit the flow of data.
- Connect: Ways to build solidarity and share ideas.
- Rebuild: A growing list of resources to help us all rethink the Internet and our relationship with it.
# ONE ACTION # THIS QR CODE COULD SAVE YOUR (DIGITAL) LIFE
Out of all the many “to dos” in our action center, there’s one we’d love for you to take right now.
The Citizens is the impact partner for Asif Kapadia's documentary feature 2073. As part this campaign, we’ve created a Signal group for people to connect, converse and fight back against the power of Big Tech; a theme at the core of Kapadia's film. Asif and the Citizens team are here - but primarily it's your space.
To access it, you would have to install the Signal app.
Signal is a bit like Whatsapp - but we prefer it since it is more secure, private and not owned by Big Tech. You can have it on your phone or desktop and can keep your number private as well!
JOIN THE COMMUNITY GROUP HERE or scan this QR code:
# ONE LINK #
What’s the freakiest but most helpful thing our team read this week? It turns out your own car might be spying on you...
If you drive a car made in the past five years, chances are it’s collecting reams of data about your driving. But many people don’t know that this data is being amassed — much less where it goes or how it’s used. General Motors was penalized in January for allegedly using its Smart Driver program to collect and sell its customers’ driving data without their knowledge or permission.
Yikes! But not to fear. In Consumer Reports this week, Derek Kravitz tells us how to turn off the flow of personal data.
Read Your Car May Be Spying On You. Here’s How to Get It to Stop. (h/t Roger McNamee)
That’s it for this week.
Hang in there,
The Citizens Team
