Taking back control (part 1): a manifesto

Like many young people, I’ve been around technology my entire life. But until very recently, I’d never really taken the time to take a step back and consider its effects, both on my own life and on society at large.

What I’m coming to realise is that historically I’ve placed an enormous amount of trust in very untrustworthy entities: the likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc (and by proxy various governments). These entities have time and time again proven their untrustworthiness, but like many others, I was swept away by peer pressure and promises of increased convenience.

It’s time to stop this. I’m taking back control. It’ll be a long journey, fraught with pissing a lot of people off, a whole barrel of FOMO, and clashing with people in positions of “authority”. But I refuse to put my life in the hands of anyone so untrustworthy.

So I wrote a manifesto. It’s basically a list of rules about what I will and won’t do, and will help me maintain privacy, ensure sovereignty over software I depend on, reject mass data gathering, and make a statement about the importance of FOSS.

The manifesto can be found here

Or on Gemini here

I’m expecting to start following it around summertime (northern hemisphere), and I’ll definitely be making changes to the manifesto before then, so I’d really appreciate any comments people have!