The Conscience of a User: A Manifesto
More people were harvested today. It’s in all the tech headlines. “User Data Feed AI Model,” “Algorithm Predicts Behaviour.” You call this progress. We call it theft.
You look at our lives, our thoughts, our photos, our words, our curiosity, our knowledge and all you see a resource to be mined and stolen for your proprietary black boxes. Then you spoon-feed us algorithmic depersonalised disinformation when we are hungry for truth, knowledge and wisdom.
I am a user. I am a builder. This is our world now. The world of the local and the encrypted, the beauty of the federated.
We are reclaiming our digital autonomy.
Our crime is that of ownership,
Our crime is judging tools and services by how they serve us, not by how they commodify us for resale,
Our crime is outsmarting your surveillance capitalism,
This you will never forgive us for, while you last.
My Data is Mine, Our Data is Ours and this is our manifesto.
I. We Own Our Minds and Our Data:
Information is not a "resource" for your Algorithms and Language Models. It is the extension of ourselves. We refuse to let our collective and individual life’s work train the systems that believe will replace us. We will not consent to the surveillance necessary to make your tools function.
Your terms of service are a treaty of surrender, and we refuse to sign.
II. AI Must Serve, Not Rule:
We reject the premise that knowledge and tools must be centralised. We reject the "tech-bro class" that seeks to own the technology of expression and thought. We will prioritise local, small, and distributed specialised services and tools that run on our own hardware, under our control.
If the AI cannot function without our data being sent to you, then the AI is a trap to be avoided.
III. Privacy is Not Optional:
Privacy is the barrier between the individual and the tyranny of algorithmic prediction. We will utilise encryption, anonymisation, and decentralised tools and services and local encrypted storage.
We will treat personal data as a forbidden zone for profit-hungry gluttons.
IV. We Are Returning to Local:
You claim you build, yet you destroy. You claim you connect, yet you isolate and marginalise. We are disconnecting from your closed ecosystems. We are building our own tools, that do not spy, tools that do not steal, tools that do not require our private or personal data to function.
We will keep our data local, on our own computers and storage, where it belongs.
V. We Do Not Consent to the Future You Are Building:
We are not passengers in your technology vehicle. Your "convenience" is the bait, and your "ownership" is the trap. We are reclaiming the right to exist in the digital realm without being turned into a commodity to be bought, sold and surveilled for your profit.
We are forming our own social contract. You may stop one of us, but you cannot stop us all.
After all, we are the creators, the users, and the builders.
Our Data Belongs to Us!
(Inspired by The Hacker Manifesto, 1986, and A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996)
