I've been rewatching tech documentaries lately (Citizenfour, Terms and Conditions May Apply, The Internet's Own Boy, The Social Dilemma, The Code: Story of Linux). Then stumbled onto this video about the Epstein files. Not speculation, but actual documents and actual names. Names that overlap with the people who own the infrastructure of the internet, who shaped international relationships and narratives, who give TED talks about openness while cooperating with the same governments Snowden exposed.
I never trusted governments or big tech. But I could at least tell myself the picture was fragmented. That story is harder to tell now.
And then age verification starts rolling out globally, simultaneously, with almost no mainstream pushback. Here's what nobody says plainly: it's not a content policy, it's a surveillance architecture. To verify age at scale you need identity. Identity needs a database. A database has a jurisdiction. A jurisdiction has a government. Once that infrastructure exists it doesn't get decommissioned, and it gets expanded and handed to whoever comes next. We've watched this pattern repeat with every "safety" law for years.
Then Anthropic formalizes a relationship with the US government. The same government from Citizenfour. I would like to say that I'm not surprised by any of this, but I am, and seeing it all connect at once hits differently. Especially all of those people's lies. Knowing that motherfuckers like Peter Thiel or others who run big tech or government will handle your data and your rights is fucking unacceptable and disgusting.
The one thing that keeps me grounded is that the alternative infrastructure already exists. Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix, which are federated and decentralized, no single server to seize or company to subpoena. The architecture itself is the resistance. I'm done with Discord and moving to Matrix. Self-hosting is the next step when I have the time, because that's the best way to be private and don't give a damn about some motherfuckers taking over your rights.