It's not YOUR algorithm, it's THEIR algorithm.

Lessons Learned from 15 years of Opting Out of Big Tech -- with thanks to @markhurst, here is the talk I gave at GEL 2026 earlier this month, now online via PeerTube and soon to be found at the Internet Archive.

Enjoy!!!

https://video.infiniteloop.tv/w/dsPwV9ewKB1r67HjUCxDrk

#optout #bigtech

Excited to be moderating a 🔥🔥🔥 panel with Gil Durán and Jason Stanley this morning at #Attention2026 in Montreal!!

New post up at #optoutproject --an intro to the Personal Data Economy.

https://www.optoutproject.net/what-is-the-data-economy-anyway/

New newsletter posted at Buttondown:

https://buttondown.com/optoutproject/archive/retro-tech-resistance-not-just-nostalgia/

This IS the US #invasion, folks, and it is time we call it what it is.

It looks like a #referendum about whether #Albertans want to 'stay in Canada.' But it is actually a Test to see if #Canada will withstand the massively funded propaganda machine that the United States is blasting at #Alberta as a Hail Mary to crack our democracy and steal our oil while their inflation is soaring, bolstered by Russia which used the same tactics on Crimea and the Donbas, Brexit, and the 2016 US election, among many others.

End this madness. A vote to #leave is a vote to stroll directly into the lion's mouth and to weaken one of the world's great and now-leading voices in the still democratic West against the well funded and encroaching forces of autocracy and oligarchy. As much as we all know there are frustrations, things to improve, and better ways to be a country, this foreign power will see to it that none of us get that chance. And they will not lay off their forces of #misinformation and #propaganda until Canadians give them the boot.

No ground based invasion of Canada can be effective, and they know it. They have to 'crack' us first, by invading our airwaves and electronic media with their poison. It worked for Russia after they invaded Crimea then bombarded the Donbas with propaganda well in advance of the tanks. The US and its illiberal allies are hoping with the tarriffs and all the negative ads on Facebook that all they have to do is sit back and wait for us to shoot ourselves in the face. It is a well laid plan.

Fellow #Canadians, my dear neighbours in #Alberta, do not be fooled by the techniques that have tumbled Western democracies around the world, using #Big :Tech infrastructures to direct targeted messaging and change minds. They stole your voter list precisely so that they can target your neighbours with floods of 'content' paid for by those who would topple our country, take your inheritance and your children's hope of prosperity and safety with them to further engorge their pockets. This is Cambridge Analytica on steroids, the preface to the invasion.

It's not just a #vote to #stay--- it's a vote to #RESIST!

Feeling like life has sped up and I am bombarded with requests and requirements. I have started saying that I can do it all, I just can't do it all at the same time. But there is more to it than that.

My brain (to use a very imperfect and limited computational simile) is like a CPU. It is extremely powerful and capable, and where I direct my attention can be transformative. But it is not a GPU that can parallel process many small tasks at once. That way, overwhelm lies. I must pay attention to one significant thing at a time according to prioritization. I can break it down into smaller tasks, but it can only take so much parallel processisng before it all grinds to a halt.

The fact that I cannot do everything at once makes me human. It also makes me unable to move at the speed of capital in the contemporary super-charged global economy. Both are forms of resistance that are fine with me.

I wish this were my email autoresponder.

So happy to be speaking today and sharing the stage with amazing people at the MOSAIC conference via the Charles Babbage Institute :D

https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/mosaics-symposium

Very, very few people go as far as I do to restrict our data from traveling. Alex Rosenblat is one of them.

Here is her latest, a bizarre caper thorugh "opting out" of data collection at your doctor's office. Which is basically impossible, unless you are willing to go to the ends of the earth to do so.

Let's hope this kind of reporting leads to regulatory change?

https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/10/mychart-health-data-opt-out-epic-notary-hipaa/

New Year, New Digital You! I'm leading a 21-day CYBER-CLEANSE to teach you and your friends how to clean up your digital footprint.

Looking to change your habits online in 2025? Follow along and by January 21, you'll be in a far better place!

https://www.optoutproject.net/the-cyber-cleanse-take-back-your-digital-footprint/

Please forward, boost, and re-post!
#cybercleanse #optout #toxictech

I love it so much!

Firefox has made it SO EASY to switch to Firefox from Chrome, that you dont even lose your OPEN TABS.

Have you got 34 open tabs lol? And you lost uBlock ad-blocker today? (You did, you lost your ad blocker, because Google)

You dont even lose open Tabs! (And you get to install uBlock)

Fancy that.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox

#chrome #ublock #adblockers

When #Google tells you to eat glue and rocks, and the Internet sinks under hallucinatory generative "content" madly seeking clicks and likes, we went back to an actual, honest to goodness, encyclopedia.

My latest piece, why we should care about knowledge in the age of generative AI, at @publicbooks

"The challenge is to listen to each other and to integrate among conflicting perspectives with grace and care, not to shout louder."

https://www.publicbooks.org/the-encyclopedia-project-or-how-to-know-in-the-age-of-ai/

My new op Ed in @techpolicypress

AI is just today’s buzzword for “outsourcing,” and it comes with the same problems that have plagued outsourced companies and workforces for decades, writes Princeton University sociologist Janet Vertesi:

https://www.techpolicy.press/dont-be-fooled-much-ai-is-just-outsourcing-redux/

📞🇪🇺 New upgrade available...

From 7 March, the designated gatekeepers – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft – must comply with all obligations in the Digital Markets Act.

These changes give you control of your:

📱 data: decide freely how your data is used
📱 phone: choose your default apps, browsers and search engines
📱 apps: install the apps you want and remove pre-installed apps

Learn more → https://europa.eu/!7YNvdp

#DigitalEU #EUDelivers

Reposting after migration: Here’s how I evaded data capture at Disneyland—and more importantly, how Big Tech has hijacked “convenience” to keep us in thrall.

http://www.publicbooks.org/data-free-disney/

More tech details at https://www.optoutproject.net/data-free-disney

#dataprivacyweek