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 information diet.

When centralized platforms face criticism, they evade. When they face competition, they copy. When they face regulation, they lobby — or just buy democracies. What they never do is relinquish control — their business model depends on it.

The fight for digital autonomy is political.

It’s about whether we build systems that distribute power or concentrate it. Big Tech’s dominance wasn’t inevitable, and it’s not unbreakable. But it’s reinforced by the choices we make every damn day. Because over and over again, we choose easy. We choose platforms with less friction. We pursue mass audiences in the hope that we’ll be granted enough attention to become one of the Chosen Few, the influencers, the wealthy.

Each time we post exclusively to Instagram, we strengthen their position. Each time we accept X’s limits on expression, we legitimize their authority. Each time we…