Iced Out
Plus: The Worst Person In the World Is Now Its First Trillionaire
Dear Citizens,
Big week in big tech, with debates rising over digital sovereignty, China making its open source move and the UK’s new PM making some confusing moves on AI.
Here’s what else to read, listen to and know this week.
🛒 ONE READ: Bullied By Amazon 🛒
How does Amazon extract every last penny? This stunning Guardian investigation by George Joseph looks at the online retail giant’s strong arm tactics to push up prices. Air fryers? Ice cream makers? Amazon bullied and punished smaller retailers who tried to charge less, threatening to cancel them from the platform entirely. The effect on the ice cream and air fryer maker? Erm… chilling -
Asked about the air fryer’s price jump, Mark Friedman, Chefman’s senior vice-president of global sales, told the Guardian: “I can’t talk to you because I still do business with Amazon and I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me”.
👉 Read the whole story here.
Bonus read: Our friend Alice McCool in The Nerve on the dark money influence operation that brought CPAC, the US (ultra)-Conservative Political Action Conference, to England this week. McCool reveals its organisers are part of a web of culture-war connections – from the US Christian right to Viktor Orbán's influence network.
👉 Read the full article now.
💰 ONE WATCH: The World’s Worst Person 💰
So the world’s worst person is now, nefariously and regrettably, its first billionaire. What does Elon Musk’s trillionaire status mean for democracy, capitalism, racism, disinformation and more? Mehdi Hasan of Team Zeteo and Naomi Klein go deep on the meaning of all those many millions.
Naomi Klein and Mehdi Hasan
👉 Watch here.
➜🚪 ONE ACTION: Metxit!? ➜🚪
No more Zucking around! If you’re sick of Meta and looking for real ways to escape platforms as entrenched as WhatsApp, there’s a signal group for that.
👉 Join here and get on your way to Dumping Zuck and his many troubled products.
Bonus UK action? Stop this data centre! Then dive into the latest edition of The Eye. Across the UK, local campaigns against data centres are beginning to gather pace. While nowhere near US levels—yet—this summer is seeing a growing wave of data centre discontent.
Team Citizens
Every week in The Eye, investigative journalists Max Colbert and Charlie Young follow the companies, political decisions and local campaigns shaping the fight over our digital infrastructure. Don’t miss it!
That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens
*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! 400+ people share practical advice on protecting your data, organising against Big Tech and staying ahead of what you need to know.
