Let’s All Go to the Movies
Plus: Quitting Time
Dear Citizens,
As Donald Trump might say, it’s so tiring all this WINNING. First Meta and Google went down in court. Then Orban … more like Or-BYE amirite heyyyyyy (great Anne Applebaum piece here). Let’s keep it rolling.
Here’s what to know, watch and do this week.
🏴☠️ ONE READ: Rebel Hearts 🏴☠️
You get to know a lot of good people in our Signal Chat (nudge nudge) but we really love Patrick Leavy, co-founder of the nonprofit group Rebel Tech Alliance. In this conversation with Mint Magazine, Patrick shared how he weaned himself off many of the big tech platforms, and what it took to do it.
The hardest barrier is not usually technical. It is social. Network effects lock people in because everyone else is already there. Leaving feels like giving something up. Leavy’s answer is to start small and local: family first, then friends, then wider circles. He describes winding down Facebook over several years, warning contacts well in advance, gathering phone numbers and email addresses, and slowly shifting habits. ‘It requires effort,’ he says, but that is precisely the point. Convenience is what made the system so dominant in the first place.
It’s a great profile of an activist and colleague we respect. But more than that, the piece is a great window into how all of us can change our relationship to big tech.
👉 Read the full piece here.
Patrick also tipped us off to something fun: the Molly vs the Machines team have built a self-hosted chatbot, so you can ask their LLM about big tech alternatives and actually get useful answers. Go on, give it a spin.
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📚 Bonus read: Fascist expert Timothy Snyder has been warning us about Donald Trump since 2016. Now, with escalating conflict in Iran, he says these are exactly the conditions for a head of state to seize power in a coup.
👉 Here are five ways this could happen.
📇 ONE WATCH: DEMOCRACY NOW! 📇
Steal this Story, Please! is about Amy Goodman, longtime host of American independent progressive news program Democracy Now. But really, it’s a love letter to independent journalism:
Goodman, who has covered the rise of Big Tech and erosion of privacy as well as anyone, gives a great interview here in WIRED.
👉 How to watch Steal this Story here.
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👻 ONE ACTION: Ghost In the Machine 👻
Sometimes we make suggestions, and sometimes we really mean it. This week? You really, really need to watch Ghost In the Machine, screening online at Kinema.com. Valerie Veatch’s film is “mandatory viewing for anyone thinking about or using AI,” and almost certainly one of the best docs of the year.
👉 Find in-person screening times and booking details here and here. Evening plans? Sorted.
Every week we surface practical ways to turn concern into action. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.
🤑 ANOTHER ACTION: Follow the Money 🤑
The fight for our legal action continues - and we need you on this one.
Our partners at Open Britain have launched a petition calling for a public inquiry into foreign interference. Because as things stand, foreign actors and ultra-wealthy donors are still exploiting gaps in our political system to buy access, shape debate and pull strings behind the scenes.
👉 Add your name.
In London? Here’s a bonus action: Get your schooling on next Saturday the 25th, for a teach-in and workshop on “Resisting Big Tech Empires” from Global Justice Now at London South Bank University. Cory Doctorow and others are speaking.
👉 All the details here.
That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens
*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! There's over 350 people in there now.
