The Rebels vs the Evil Empire: A Tale of Open-Source Resistance

The big corporations that own online platforms are weaponizing their gift of ‘free’ services at the concealed cost of human freedom and privacy. But a silent army of online rebels is developing the technology to help good triumph over evil.

Every time you log onto Facebook, Instagram, Google, or Twitter, you are relinquishing your right to privacy. You trade your data in exchange for ‘free’ services, without seeing nor understanding the hidden price you pay for the bargain. 

But like a Grimm’s fairy tale turned into reality, the temptation of shiny free gifts is being used as a means of coercion – and is concealing a more ominous intent beneath its surface. After all, nothing comes for free.

The original intention of the Internet was to be a space of open knowledge, free speech, and community. However, the vested interests of big business dominate the platforms you use, which steal and exploit your data. 

An evil army of corporate bots harvest your data, monetize it for private gain, and drown you in advertising, intentionally misleading information, and use tailored content to drive specific agendas by skewing statistics and dressing fiction up as fact. 

This is not what the Internet was meant to be like.

Breaking the Spell

While you might be familiar with the phrase, ‘if you’re not paying, then you’re the product,’ it can still be hard to understand what measures you can take to stop yourself from becoming a manipulated commodity. This is especially true when multi-billion-dollar technology companies are ambushing you on all major digital platforms.

But while the tech giants pursue their profit-driven objectives, a hidden community of tech-minded rebels is taking measures to enable you to break free from your online puppet masters. 

Enter the open-source cooperativistas, who have seen an alternative future and still subscribe to a utopian vision for the web. These heroes are using open-source code and co-owned hardware to free society from its enchantment, allowing you to regain your online autonomy.

Good Triumphs Over Evil with Open-Source

This silent army of open-source enthusiasts is more significant than you might realize; they are now coalescing in collaborations and federations to provide services that were previously only possible with multi-million-pound startup funds. 

Open-source software used to suffer from usability issues, but as time has passed, the contributors that help develop the code are catching up with big corporations.

Take meet.coop, for example, an international collaboration between a range of tech co-ops and designers, that provides a surveillance-free alternative to Zoom. Or Open Web Systems, a UK-Sweden collaboration that provides a military-grade end-to-end encrypted alternative to Gmail and Google Drive. 

Both of these cooperative ventures use open source code, powered by 100% renewable energy, to provide services that respect their users’ rights to privacy.

These projects are the forerunners of a new wave of data – and platform – ownership that is developing on the Internet. 

There are hundreds and thousands of other initiatives bubbling away in the backwaters of open-source tech and, if Wikipedia has taught us anything, these collaborative efforts are not to be under-estimated. 

By supporting these collaborative endeavors, and the hidden heroes that are fighting for your freedom, the Internet may still achieve its utopian happily ever after.

About the Open Co-op

The Open Co-op is a worldwide community of individuals and organizations who are collaborating to build a regenerative economy. 

The community organizes events and run projects to help create decentralized collaboration at scale.

Together, they are designing, building, and testing:

• New ownership models – to provide equitable access to the organizations and resources we rely on.
• New economic systems – to provide appropriate ways to measure, store, and exchange value.
• New governance structures – to provide democratic methods to steward our collective endeavors.
• A new narrative – to underpin these new systems and replace the ‘money rules all’ mentality.