Big Tech Wants You Trapped. The Open Web Sets You Free

Big Tech designed their platforms to keep you trapped.

YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok aren’t neutral spaces. They’re businesses built on capturing your attention and data. Their algorithms, notification systems, and content policies all serve one purpose: keeping you engaged on their terms. And their terms alone. There’s no freedom here — except the freedom to leave.

The problem isn’t that these platforms exist. There are always bad-faith actors in every ecosystem. The problem is that they’ve convinced the world that they offer the only legitimate way to participate online.

This is deliberate. When you post content exclusively on these platforms, you build their asset, not yours. When your audience exists only within their ecosystem, you depend on their permission to reach people. When your digital identity lives inside their databases, you surrender control of your online presence. And when your online presence is an innate part of your identity, you’re sacrificing everything.

The open web offers a fundamentally different model.

Mastodon, PixelFed — the entire Fediverse — prove one thing: that social platforms can function without centralized control and that technology can connect people without surveilling their every move and controlling their…