2022 Will Be A Great Year For Alternative Technology
BRIGHTON, England, April 14, 2022. Faced with pervasive algorithmic censorship and corporate meddling in what we see and say online, people are on the lookout for companies and spaces that truly are alternatives to the VC-backed, surveillance capitalist networks that have come to dominate the modern web.
Billionaire Elon Musk made headlines on April 4th when regulatory filings showed that he had acquired a 9.2% stake in the social platform Twitter. Since this Musk has polled users about an edit button¹ and asked if Twitter is dying², before declining a seat on the Twitter board. Users concerned about further profit-seeking changes to the network, such as the disastrous Fleets³, concocted by the ruthless Twitter-share-owning hedge fund Elliott Management, or not wanting to continue supporting a company part-owned by the recently-minted richest person on earth, have been looking for spaces that cannot be easily pushed around by boards looking to move away from their best interests.
Evidence of this cropped up when, on April 5th, Mastodon Founder, Eugen Rochko, posted “Sign-ups really picked up since the #elonmusk news.⁴” Mastodon is a federated social network run by a German-based not-for-profit company, Mastodon GmbH. Both its company structure and its open source code mean that users of Mastodon can be more confident it will stay true to its mission, technically-minded users who disagree with their actions can fork (copy) the code and run their own Mastodon, much like the Trump-backed Twitter network, Truth Social⁵.
Alternative video networks have also cropped up, mainly due to perceived censorship by Alphabet Inc. through their video platform YouTube; one notable instance of this being the Conservative MP, David Davis, having a speech on the illiberal nature of vaccine passports removed from the network⁶. One of these alternative video networks, Rumble, has experienced considerable growth in the first quarter of 2022, recording a 22% increase in monthly active users compared to the last quarter of 2021, settling on an average of 41 million monthly active users⁷. Other options outside of Google’s control include Odysee, BitChute and the federated network PeerTube.
This trend isn’t just restricted to social networks, with movements in software such as choice of browser, and hardware such as choice of smartphone and operating system. People looking to find hardware options are now able to look to Fairphone⁸, Teracube⁹, Astro Slide¹⁰ and PinePhone¹¹, with these companies and organisations having a mix of community-led and environmental goals. In a recent online poll around the Google-Apple duopoly in phone operating systems, undertaken by the UK-based alternative search engine, Mojeek, 82% of respondents were either currently using an alternative operating system, or were strongly considering one.
Mojeek CEO, Colin Hayhurst, said:
Mojeek has experienced growth and exposure off the back of the growing movement against Big Tech, with many dissatisfied at the way in which Google influences what people do or do not see on the web. With Microsoft’s Bing and their syndication partner, DuckDuckGo, announcing that they are downranking sites, Mojeek are now the alternative choice for those seeking search engine neutrality.