>> How Social Media Is Destroying Society 📱 Down With Big Tech 🧑🏽‍💻 Gatekeep Your Input At All Costs 💡

Welcome back to your favorite blog about critical thinking, as it turns out. We are on a mission to inform and inspire. Another good YouTube recommendation came our way. I have never considered YouTube to be a part of social media. YouTube started in 2006 and is a video platform. Ok, shorts are annoying, adhering to the pressure of providing short form content too. Today's featured video is called: How Social Media Slowly Ruins Society & What You Can Do by content creator Mikey Posada. We think it's encouraging to see some emerging YouTubers demonstrating critical thinking, despite growing up in an era dominated by screens. Check out the video here: 

Especially this part about input is interesting, because I realized that I am 'gatekeeping my input at all costs' since quite some time now. I do not use any social media, I keep news/negativity input to an absolute minimum and try to fill my brain with things that interest me, content that is uplifting or I can learn from. New ideas come and thoughts are being formed based on that. In my case it is also my favorite music and different films from back in the day. Things that resonate with me. Also real life experiences over screen time any day.  Ideally this type of input will inspire me to take action, which I am actually doing right now, even with this blog post.

I want to include information from the People vs. Big Tech movement as well. You can find more on their website.

People Vs Big Tech (PvBT) is a global movement fighting for a different kind of Internet – one free from intrusive surveillance, addiction-algorithms, harmful content and echo chambers. For too long a small handful of tech CEOs have been allowed to trample on our rights and disrupt our communities, unleashing industrial-scale disinformation, driving hate and polarisation and preying on our vulnerabilities – all to keep us clicking and scrolling while they profit from our data.  With over 100 organisations, representing more than 71 million citizens, People vs Big Tech is taking on their outsized power, channelling public outrage into concrete action for change and helping secure groundbreaking victories, like sweeping new tech laws in Europe.

And you thought Thanos was the problem.

We the people face the devastation of their business model – rising hate, lies, polarisation and an erosion of our fundamental rights and freedoms. We have to find our way to the original promise of the internet as a force for good – no matter our class, religion or skin color. It will take all of us – the People vs Big Tech – to do that.

We believe in the original promise of the internet as a force for good. But a small group of tech corporations have cheated us of that dream, instead constructing a toxic online world where they exploit our private data and attention to build vast advertising empires.

While they make obscene profits, we face the devastation of a system designed to keep people scrolling at all costs – rising hate and lies, stolen childhoods, polarisation, fragmentation of society and even violence. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, we’re already shifting the dial. Because together we are stronger than any corporation and together we’re rising up to build a better digital world.

“For years, a handful of tech billionaires have been running the internet like a bunch of feudal kings, harvesting and profiting from our data while their platforms wreak havoc on everything from mental health to democracy. But an amazing generation of young leaders are rising up and fighting back, united by a vision for a better online world — where children are protected from deliberately addictive apps, where we can go online and trust what we’ll see in our feeds, where we can learn, explore and connect with loved ones without being relentlessly spied on. 

We are so excited to be teaming up with Lush for the Big Tech Rebellion, which will help channel vital funds into this burgeoning youth movement, supercharging their campaigns and helping take their message directly to those who hold the power to change the system.” – People vs Big Tech.

You can take action, too. You can sign The People’s Declaration where your voice will join an open network of civil society organisations and concerned citizens working together to challenge the power and abuses of Big Tech. This is a movement. The more people join - the bigger the impact will be. We need new policies. Protect the children. Protect the planet and TAKE DOWN BIG TECH.