How to Fight the Broligarchy

The first step to solving a problem is admitting there is one.

Let’s face it — today, many of us suffer from an addiction, the source of which feels impossible to escape: our phones.

It’s always there, this limitless technology, ready to offer you the world. Accessible always, calling to you. A notification, a message, a new like, a news update. Endless scrolling. Everything at your fingertips at all times. How do you escape something inescapable?

Want the answer to a question? Look it up on Google (or now, ChatGPT). Want to buy something? Get it in two days on Amazon. Want to stay up to date with your friends? Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. 

Each time we use these platforms, we become more likely to use them again. They are designed to hook us. These tech companies have separated us from one another and addicted us to our phones. We’ve been caught in an endless cycle that further divides and addicts, over, and over again, for the purposes of profiting off us.

Humans aren’t meant to live like this. We are meant to be with one another, in communities, socializing, loving, present with people and nature. 

We’re victims to the greed of oligarchic technocrats, and humanity is worse off because of it.

Here’s what you can do today to take action against the broligarchy:

1. Amazon
   1. Cancel your Amazon Prime subscription.
   2. Stop using Amazon entirely if possible; if not possible, severely limit purchases on Amazon. Instead, purchase directly from retailers. You can try Costco as well, which is still supporting DEI efforts.
   3. Stop buying from WholeFoods.
2. Google
   1. Switch from Google’s search engine to DuckDuckGo or Brave.
   2. Switch from Google’s Chrome browser to DuckDuckGo or Brave.
   3. Switch from Google suite (e.g., email, drive) to Proton suite.
3. Social Media
   1. Switch from X & Threads to Bluesky.
   2. Switch from Facebook to Mastodon.
   3. Switch from Instagram to Flashes (Bluesky-based) or Pixelfed (see details on how to easily migrate).
   4. Switch from Facebook Messenger & WhatsApp to Signal.
   5. Switch from TikTok (it is a surveillance tool for China) to Skylight (Bluesky-based).
   6. If you choose to continue using Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, only use these platforms for resistance efforts (e.g., informing people of fascism and sharing protest information). This is still a vital part of online resistance, whether you migrate or not!
4. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
   1. It is difficult to avoid AIs such as ChatGPT today. If you do use them, at least make sure you understand the risks:
      1. They are stealing your work to profit off you, and it seems they have no plans to stop as the Trump regime fired the head of the US copyright office after she released a report on how AI potentially oversteps law.
      2. Every time you use these models, it contributes to destroying the planet. Writing a 100-word email with ChatGPT is the equivalent of dumping out one water bottle.
      3. AI bots like ChatGPT often hallucinate, providing inaccurate information to users, and this phenomenon is only getting worse.
      4. Some of these tools are owned by techno-fascist billionaires who can exploit them for information control and reality distortion. Just yesterday, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot “Grok” was spreading misinformation about nonexistent South African “white genocide” to users across the platform.
5. Learn & Educate
   1. Subscribe to Carole Cadwalladr’s How to Survive the Broligarchy. Cadwalladr is widely known for helping to expose the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Recently, she spoke at TED about the digital coup we’re experiencing.
   2. Subscribe to Gil Duran’s The Nerd Reich. There is no better coverage on the neoreactionary movement than Duran’s. Here’s a great article to start with, comparing Curtis Yarvin’s ideas about a CEO-dictator to Elon Musk’s actions.
   3. Subscribe to Wired. They have comprehensive coverage on the regime’s data heist as well as useful information on data privacy.
   4. Follow Carole Cadwalladr, Gil Duran, Jenny Cohn, and Brooke Harrington on Bluesky. Cohn has fantastic coverage on “network states” (see her thread on the people behind this fascist movement), while Harrington covers the Broligarchy (check out her interview with Jon Stewart).
   5. Read about Bluesky’s vision for a decentralized, privacy-forward internet, learn about the AT Protocol backing its efforts, and discover the new promising apps that are propping up using the same technologies.

Finally, share this article widely. And when you switch platforms, why not share a post when you leave, encouraging others to join you? You can include this article, its list of actions, and your new accounts on the alternative people-centric platforms. 

The more people that boycott Big Tech, the better. Their power comes from more of us living in their enclosures so they can steal and sell our data. Without that, they’re nothing.

It’s time we move out.