Brave, DuckDuck Go, the Fediverse, and the End of Big Tech

The total American commercialization of the internet does not have to take place. Nor does the Chinese social credit system have to take over the world and force it into totalitarian subservience, which is their goal.

There are technical alternatives to most, if not all, the technologies of control from these so-called superpowers.

For example, while Google has force-fed the world on its surveillance technology to the point that search is called “Googling”, you can simply switch out Google Search for any number of alternatives. Both Brave Search, now in Beta, and the more established DuckDuckGo, are at least privacy focused, although they are both still American-based, and Brave, according to what I know, is heavily backed by crypto-currency interests. But the point is, there is choice.

As well, Google’s web browser, which has supposedly taken over the world, can be also easily replaced with the Brave Browser, Tor, FireFox, or any number of others. I hate to point this out as I have worked with the actual Product Manager of Google Chrome Nasim Sedaghat and she is brilliant and dedicated, but my only true loyalty is to the advancement of the technology in an ethical and equitable way.

One can also delve into what’s called “The Fediverse” but you may equally run into some nefarious characters there. The Fediverse is based on the ActivityPub protocol. Its most famous application is called Mastodon, which aims to replace Twitter and some aspects of Facebook.

Also on The Fediverse, there is the Instagram look alike PixelFed, created in Canada.

I personally don’t even like most of social media, as written content should ideally be edited, and not subject to the simplistic algorithms devised by uneducated engineers with no education in the humanities.

The computer, which was basically invented by Allen Turing to crack German encryption, cannot, and never will, replace human editors, both female and male, so a lot of these technologies, including all the hype surrounding so-called artificial intelligence, and so-called big data, should be heavily regulated by institutions, law, and ethics.

Some technologies are better than others, including in the software realm, and so I tried to give some suggestions centered around privacy, which again, include such software applications as Brave, DuckDuckGo, and also for email, virtual private networks (VPN), and even now cloud storage, you can try those offered from Proton out of Switzerland.