For the following reasons: having witnessed the emergence of the companies that control these services and subsequently read the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, I understand their operations and their agendas, and this understanding leads me to avoid the intrusion of these big techs into my life. I have no illusions about the possibility of being completely independent of them — I use, after all, a Google email address — but it is possible for me, for example, to maintain this website on my own account, as well as my blog, both built with open-source tools and both offering RSS feeds so you can follow me if you wish. Through these independent and open channels I expose to the world what I believe I should present about myself, without forcing anyone to use a closed platform ruled by obscure algorithms and full of advertisements.

In other words, I like the idea of ​​IndieWeb: an internet made by people and not by corporations, where content belongs to its authors and not to big tech companies that, as we know, take advantage of everything they can get their hands on to make their users addicted and to profit from the sale of their data.

Furthermore, as if the harms of social media weren’t enough, their owners have recently been supporting autocrats and turning a blind eye to the content that extremists and neo-fascists around the world publish in their services, thus sabotaging our fragile democracies and making life even harder for minorities and other vulnerable groups. They do so for the advantages of being close to a specific kind of power which is very convenient for them: one that has no commitment to the collective well-being. And also for the bigger profits that the deregulation of their algorithms guarantees them. If you use these services, reconsider. Contrary to what they want you to believe, they are not essential to life.