Reading Between the Algorithms #1

No Pride in Surveillance

It’s the age of a modernized digital landscape. Ads targeted to your specific demographic with what seems to be an unsettling amount of insight on you loom ominously on your timeline. You’re not sure how these ads find out about things you swear you’ve only talked about. Now, platforms are utilizing AI to harvest your data. I wouldn’t wait around to find out how your data is being abused when that information eventually leaks. So how do we opt out?

Hi - I’m Squid, sometimes referred to as Atreyu, an ethical hacker and Cybersecurity grad student at Johns Hopkins. I recently pivoted from corporate healthcare to work in a trade where I get to fix all sorts of things! In my spare time, I’m an artist that likes to help out local small businesses with web design and repair requests. I’m also the Chief Marketing Officer for a Cybersecurity nonprofit based in Indiana. I look forward to using this column to share tips on data privacy and advocate for a free, open-source and decentralized future.

When it comes to queer community building, our efforts have shifted to a more hybrid approach. The rise in technofascism, a phenomenon defined as the use of technology to uphold authoritarian and anti-democratic political agendas, means that our voices still face censorship and erasure online. Centralized platforms like Instagram remain a popular option. These platforms are often controlled by a multinational technology company that effectively owns your data from the moment you join. A shift to alternative, decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon is slowly taking place. In short, decentralization means less central authority, which makes it difficult to silence, erase, or control our narrative, and means more control over our data. These alternatives are open-source, free, and community-centered. No more sneaky updates that default you into becoming an AI test subject and make opting out a 20-step, hidden process. No entity using your data and money to fund genocide.

Some decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon are designed to federate with each other, and belong to a web of interconnected platforms commonly referred to as the Fediverse. Imagine if you could read and interact with your friends’ Tumblr posts right in your Instagram feed. In short, that’s what it means to federate. It also means that any hate speech that worms its way into your feed vanishes if a server you join refuses to federate with hate. You and your friends can find a userbase to connect with by navigating to mastodonservers.net/servers and searching by keywords that match your interests. Try using different keywords like “lgbtq”, “gaming”, or “gardening” and try more than one! Some servers are invite-only, so you will want to include “open signup” in your search.

Unplugging Big Tech takes collective effort. The good news is that you aren’t alone in your desire to escape AI, unskippable ads, and intrusive harvesting of your information. There are free and open-source software (FOSS) alternatives for just about everything from streaming platforms (free from ICE recruitment ads) to software like Ghost - which is what fuels The Lavender’s online blog! In the next few months, we’ll explore some of these more ethical options together, and I’ll walk you through how to find, create, and maintain your own library of alternative applications to take back ownership of your data.

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