The year ahead

It’s difficult to talk about accountability right now without sounding a bit out of step with reality.

The most basic norms of the post-war order are openly flouted - and the response of the UK Prime Minister is, well, not to respond at all. While Trump and Starmer’s deputies Vance and Lammy enjoy a nice bit of dinner, and Macron postpones a meeting of the G7 reportedly to accommodate Trump’s 80th Birthday Cage Fight (CAGE FIGHT!?), the signal is clear: power is being indulged, not checked.

It’s difficult to talk about accountability right now without sounding a bit out of step with reality…totally delusional.

When political leaders treat the post-war order as expendable, it doesn’t bode well for meaningful regulation of Trump’s favourite little pets: US platforms and AI companies.

Only last week, we saw the unregulated AI tool Grok being used to generate sexualised imagery of children and immigration enforcement escalate into lethal street-level violence, enabled by vast data systems designed to predict, target and act at scale. Tools provided by companies like Palantir, sold as neutral infrastructure, are being used to link surveillance directly to the coercive power of ICE. The symbiosis of power and technology is not abstract.

For those calling it out, the consequences are becoming increasingly real. You might remember the in-depth interview we published with Planatir whistleblower Juan Sebastián Pinto. This week, Juan writes his “final message before being on an FBI watchlist”.

And, just before Christmas, several of our colleagues working on disinformation and election integrity were barred from entering the US - not because they had broken the law, but because their work had become politically inconvenient.

This is the context in which tech accountability work now operates - the environment we operate in. It’s reasonable, in moments like this, to ask whether regulation itself is becoming a fantasy.

That’s why, in 2026, we’re continuing to pursue a deliberately multi-pronged approach. Without getting ahead of ourselves, here’s what defines the year ahead for us.

1. Rebuilding culture outside the choke hold of monopolistic platforms

Some of the most powerful political work doesn’t look like politics at all.

Film, storytelling and shared public experience are where people make sense of power. As cultural distribution becomes more centralised, the space for critical, independent work shrinks.

This year, we’re investing in models that take culture back into communities - deliberately slower, more human, and less dependent on systems that flatten and undermine counter-culture.

2. Supporting alternatives to platform dominance

We’re looking beyond critique and resistance alone. For all the attention on Big Tech’s dominance, there is already a growing ecosystem of alternative tools - open-source, privacy-first and decentralised systems operating outside extractive platform models.

What they lack is not seriousness, but visibility and connection. Part of our work will focus on bringing these alternatives into the public conversation: giving their builders a platform to speak to journalists, policymakers and the wider public; helping make their value legible beyond technical circles, and encouraging collaboration where it can support scale.

PS. We’re exploring how best to resource this work - so any ideas - let us know!

3. Treating journalism as public infrastructure, not raw material

Independent journalism is not a content supply chain there to train Large Language Models. It is a democratic function.

As AI systems absorb vast amounts of reporting - often without transparency, consent or meaningful compensation - the risk is not just economic. It is political.

This year, we’re focused on reasserting that journalism must survive technological change, not be traded away behind closed doors. In particular, we need to defend independent media and individual journalists who are excluded from the closed-door “strategic partnerships” being struck between large news organisations and AI companies. Press Gazette holds the list of who is suing and who is doing deals with large AI companies - updated regularly.

As ever, our work this year continues to insist on a simple principle: democratic systems require active protection. That protection does not come from statements of concern, but from pressure that forces states to meet their obligations.

We won an important one back in July from the European Court of Human Rights, which confirmed that states have a positive obligation to investigate and combat foreign interference. Now - especially after Nathan Gill pleaded guilty to Russian bribery - we need to make sure the UK government is actually meeting that duty.

How we work — and why it matters

We are small by design and opportunistic by necessity.

Sometimes that means legal action. Sometimes it means storytelling that reaches far beyond policy circles. Sometimes it means building coalitions that didn’t exist before. Often, it means all three at once.

Why support us now

2025 marked five years of The Citizens taking on tech power and its political enablers — and we’ve achieved more than we thought.

The next few years will determine whether democratic societies retain the ability to govern the systems they depend on, or whether that hard-won power is handed over to self-interested tech firms and bad actors.

We enter this year with experience, momentum and a clear sense of what’s at stake. How far we can go depends on the support of readers, funders and collaborators who understand what’s on the line.

If you’d like to be part of that effort in 2026, we’d love to have you.

To make it easier, we’re offering a limited-time 50% discount on all memberships until 31 January. You can join the Citizens for £2.50 a month or £30 for the year.

If you’re reading this, you’re already part of that community. Thank you — for standing on the side of accountability when it would be easier not to.

More soon,
Team Citizens

*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! There’s 340 people there now.