Tootfinder

I really like Genoa! A big city, industrial and with an enormous port. But also a lovely city center very dense with tiny pedestrian streets. And of course lots of monumental Italian architecture.

Big Tech got almost everything it wanted from President Trump, as he backs policies that allow the industry to grow unfettered, worrying some conservatives (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/technol<…

From A.I. to Chips, Big Tech Is Getting What It Wants From Trump
The president has backed policies that allow the industry to grow unfettered. The mutually beneficial alliance is causing concern among some conservatives.

If your stated goal is to make computing into a “utility” (aka subscription) you can only obtain from Big Tech and if your entire industry is comprised of rentiers, it makes perfect sense to also make actually owning a general computing device as expensive as possible.
As far as Big Tech is concerned, this is a feature, not a bug.
It’s capitalists acquiring capital and pricing it out of the reach of those they want to make dependent on them.
Also: fuck these people.

Strong, clear, and short write-up on the social-media-addiction case that Meta and YouTube just lost. I hadn’t appreciated how important this could be: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/big-tech-meta-youtube-lawsuit.html
[paywalled sorry]

Opinion | The Terrible Cost of the Infinite Scroll
We are beginning an era where the social media companies are finally held accountable for their harm.

Tech stocks suffer their worst week in almost a year, driven by the Iran war and Meta's legal defeats; Meta fell 11%, Alphabet fell ~9%, and Microsoft fell ~7% (Ari Levy/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/27/tech-stocks-iran-war-meta-verdict.html

Tech stocks suffer worst week in nearly a year, driven down by war worries, Meta legal woes
Meta's twin legal defeats this week and a big selloff in Micron spurred a drop in technology stocks, which were broadly hit by rising oil prices.

Frankreich nimmt die digitale Souveränität selbst in die Hand. Mit der flächendeckenden Einführung der Videokonferenzplattform Visio verabschiedet sich der Staat von US-Diensten wie Microsoft Teams und Zoom.
Zum Artikel: https://heise.de/-11155120?wt_mc=sm.re<…

Der "Big Tech Tobacco Moment", analysiert von @… :
"Es geht um viel mehr. Das Urteil könnte die Big-Tech-Konzerne in ihrem Innersten treffen, weil es nicht auf die Inhalte, sondern die Plattformlogik zielt: Infinite Scroll, Autoplay, Benachrichtigungen, Filter Bubble und Echokammer."
und:
"Wenn die Plattform bei den Teenag…

Court docs: Zuckerberg texted Musk approvingly about his work with DOGE in February 2025, offering to "take down content doxxing or threatening" DOGE staffers (Karissa Bell/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/mark-zuc

Mark Zuckerberg offered to 'help' Elon Musk with DOGE in 2025
According to court documents, Mark Zuckerberg texted Musk approvingly about his work with the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Big Tech Should Pay for What It Has Done to Us
"The truth is, it’s hard for profit-motivated companies to decide to make less money. So we can raise the cost of bad behavior. It worked with smoking. You can still smoke, but it could cost $15 a pack and you often can’t find a place where it’s allowed these days."

Opinion | Big Tech Should Pay for What It Has Done to Us
We are beginning an era where the social-media companies are finally held accountable for their harm.

Wow. Finally a truly good article about moving away from big tech in the national news here in Denmark. And yes, Mastodon is in it. It’s not a perfect list, but it’s the first good one I’ve seen outside of personal blogs. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/teknolo…

Many are surprised as the owners/managers of big high-tech companies have embraced and paid de facto bribes to trump.
I was part of the silicon valley (and Boston) era when those now-huge companies got started.
Having observed many of the people who controlled those then-new companies, I am not surprised that those companies are now institutions of political reaction and economic concentration.
Back then the Silicon valley was filled with cocaine and money-worshiping people…

Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more;
A handful of companies monopolize the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives
https://www.theg…

Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more
A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives

“A jury in LA has delivered a damning verdict for two of the world's most popular digital platforms, Instagram and YouTube.
It ruled those apps are addictive, and deliberately engineered that way – and that its owners have been negligent in their safeguarding of the children who have used them.
…
Some experts have described the verdict as big tech's "big tobacco" moment, and we know how that worked out - although it didn't stop people smoking altogether…

What next for big tech after landmark social media addiction verdict?
The ruling could be the beginning of the end of social media as we know it, writes the BBC's technology editor Zoe Kleinman.

Ui, digitale Unabhängigkeit nimmt auch woanders Fahrt auf!
Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/26/how-to-replac…

Just saw how various websites are using 50 GB total in Chrome. A big culprit is every site with an embedded YouTube video seems to have its own copy of 313MB of YouTube crap. It's partitioned for privacy purposes and I'm guessing nothing is de-duping that storage. I wonder if every site has to download it too?

“Big Tech’s AI hype is distracting users from the rapid and dangerous expansion of giant, energy and water-intensive data centres […].
There is simply no evidence that AI will help the climate more than it will harm it.
Rather than relying on credible and substantiated data, Big Tech companies are writing themselves a blank cheque to pollute on the empty promise of future salvation. We cannot bet the climate on these baseless claims.”

Det var på tide med en god artikel om alternativerne hos DR! https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/teknologi/kan-man-klare-sig-uden-amerikansk-big-tech-her-er-nogle-af-alternativerne

Comments by heads of Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI and others, many delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, reveal a shift of narrative from optimistic inevitability towards recognition of geopolitical tensions, energy scarcity, economic bubbles and the race to make AI truly useful.
https://www.

Big tech leaders opine on the future of AI
Big tech leaders have been opining this week, on the future of AI, taking on the bubble talk, resource constraints and opportunities.

heise | Tschüss, Big Tech: Acht sichere E-Mail-Alternativen aus Europa im Vergleich
Gmail, iCloud, Outlook – die größten E-Mail-Anbieter sitzen in den USA. Mit diesen europäischen Alternativen erklären Sie Ihre digitale Unabhängigkeit.

Die gefährlichsten Firmen der Welt - Big Tech
Überwachung, Datenhandel, Manipulation - welche Macht haben globale Digitalkonzerne? Wie verändern Daten und Algorithmen Wirtschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft?
📺 https://www.zdf.de/dokus/zdfinfo-die-gefaehrl…

Die gefährlichsten Firmen der Welt - Big Tech
Google, Meta & Co.: Welche Macht haben globale Digitalkonzerne? Wie verändern die Datenhändler unsere Welt? Und wie schwer sind sie zu kontrollieren?

OpenAI fired an employee for insider trading on prediction markets like Polymarket; Unusual Whales has flagged 77 suspected insider trades around OpenAI events (Kate Knibbs/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-fires-employee-insider-trading-polymarke…

OpenAI Fires an Employee for Prediction Market Insider Trading
Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are big business, and some Big Tech employees are testing boundaries by making trades based on insider knowledge.

Ruling in the LA bellwether case could impact Meta and other platforms, opening up a flood of litigation challenging product design and bypassing Section 230 (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/do-back-to-back-courtroom-losses-her…

Series D, Episode 03 - Traitor
AVON: So Tarrant, this is your big moment.
TARRANT: If the teleport works.
VILA: It's working perfectly now, I checked it myself.
DAYNA: [Laughs] Yes, but would you use it yourself Vila? That's the real test.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/403/176…

It's kind of funny: at work I was called a "cloud native champion" for our work in cloud adoption. - And at home im getting rid of all big tech.

"Van het ministerie mag big tech de gesprekken over digitale autonomie zelf leiden"
https://www.

Van het ministerie mag big tech de gesprekken over digitale autonomie zelf leiden
Nederland wil minder afhankelijk worden van big tech, maar Binnenlandse Zaken laat de gesprekken daarover leiden door een branchevereniging die de belangen van big tech uitdraagt. De Nederlandse cloudaanbieders zijn bij de start buitenspel gezet. ‘Dit is als de tabakslobby laten meeschrijven aan anti-rookwetgeving.’

Everything Big Tech gets shittier and shittier. Yes I'm using an Android phone, bad. This is all self-inflicted.
Wondering about the weather tomorrow, I click "26 Feb Tomorrow" (yes it lists "Wed 25 Feb (2026)" for today, and "Fri" for the day after tomorrow, but the day of tomorrow shall not be named, apparently.).
It takes me to a website with ads (terrible!). But it lists "Tue 30". There isn't a Tue 30 in January, February, n…

What will people do when AI can handle most current white-collar tasks?
I don't know.
And that's the whole point.
Nobody knew what displaced agricultural workers would do, either,
-- until they did it.
The absence of a visible next chapter isn't evidence that there won't be one.
It's evidence that we're bad at predicting what humans will invent when constraints shift.

Everything is awesome (why I'm an optimist)
February is the month the internet decided we're all going to die. In the span of about two weeks, Matt Shumer's Something Big is Happening racked up over 80 million views on X with its breathless comparison of AI to the early days of COVID, telling his non-tech friends and

Have you written any Anti-ICE Posts on Threads, Facebook or YouTube?
Meta & Google gave your name up to Trump, Kristi Noem & DHS. And Amazon is now turning over Ring camera footage.
☑️ Big Tech Confirms DHS Subpoenas: Meta and Google Users Targeted Over Anti-ICE Posts

Big Tech Confirms DHS Subpoenas: Meta and Google Users Targeted Over Anti-ICE Posts
Major tech firms acknowledged they have complied with DHS subpoenas aiming to ID anti-ICE protestors

Exclusive: Big Tech companies band together to fight global scams
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/16/tech-companies-scam-accord-google-meta-amazon

Exclusive: Tech, retail companies band together to fight global scams
Scammers have only become more organized and impactful in recent years, forcing tech companies to rethink their strategies for protecting their users.

Source: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI will sign White House's initiative to build their own electricity supply for AI data centers (Emma Colton/Fox News)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/scoop-trump-brings-…

Scoop: Trump brings Big Tech to White House to curb power costs amid AI boom
President Donald Trump announces major tech companies must provide their own power for new AI data centers during White House meeting in March with Secretary Chris Wright.

Let's stop calling them "big tech" and start calling them "tech oligarchs".
"Big tech" is too ambiguous. E.g. Linux could be called "big tech" too.
Also the problematic aspect is immediately revealed: the individuals at the top, their corruption and misuse of the power.

Big Tech – ZDFinfo zeichnet das beunruhigende Porträt von Google, Meta, Amazon & Co: Aus einst idealistischen Start-ups wurden Datenkraken, deren Algorithmen entscheiden, was wir sehen, denken und wählen. Eine Warnung vor Datenmacht, Manipulation und demokratischer Fragilität. Pflichtsendung! #BigTech #Datenschutz

Gemeinsam mit vielen anderen habe ich den Offenen Brief von @… gegen die "Chat-Kontrolle 1.0" an das Europäische Parliament unterschrieben.
Auch in der #ePrivacy Verordnung darf die Überwachung der Messenger nicht umgesetzt werden.

This whole thread is such a joy to read, about migrating away from big tech and taking back control of a digital life. #TechSovereignty #TechEmpowerment
#DanmarkSkifter

« J’ai décidé de faire mes adieux Š Gmail » : ces initiatives pour se passer des Big Tech américaines
https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2026/03/14/j-ai-decide-de-faire-mes…

« J’ai décidé de faire mes adieux à Gmail » : ces initiatives pour se passer des Big Tech américaines
Accompagnés par des associations, des particuliers et des collectifs abandonnent les Gafam au profit d’autres solutions, libres, sobres, locales et non marchandes.

The Guardian view on changes to copyright laws: authors should be protected over big tech
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/13/the-guardian-view-on…

let me rephrase that title : Big Tech basically flipped their script and bowed to the King (other images come to mind but would be very vulgar)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/big-tech-basically-took-trumps-unpredicta…

Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down
From Apple gifting a gold statue to the US taking a stake in Intel.

I'm going to stop writing to my Labour MP. The last one was about digital sovereignty (i.e. need for government to use open source, not big tech firms where possible).
I got back a vindication of the government's plans for data centres and AI.

»USA und China rüsten bei KI massiv auf – diese Szenarien drohen Europa:
Digitale Souveränität statt Abhängigkeit von Big-Tech-Konzernen - Dieses für das demokratische Europa erstrebenswerte Ziel wird durch die KI-Offensiven der Amerikaner und Chinesen infrage gestellt. Eine aktuelle Studie zeigt vier Zukunftsszenarien auf.«
Ich frage mich wann die KI-Lücke real wird und in welchem Ausmaß für wen?
🤖

Wie Europa im KI-Rennen gegen die USA und China bestehen kann
Digitale Souveränität statt Abhängigkeit von Big-Tech-Konzernen? Eine aktuelle Studie zeigt vier Zukunftsszenarien auf.

Hey @…, you want to incentivise small sustainable online organisations in the EU (e.g., small not-for-profits like Small Technology Foundation) as an alternative to Big Tech?
Raise the EU's €10,000 cross-border OSS threshold to €1M (or even €10M).
You’ll still stop Big Tech corporations from jurisdiction shopping and you’ll r…

Vom AI-Hype zur AI-Angst: Warum Tech-Aktien 2026 so stark verlieren
Backlash: Big-Tech-Aktien notieren seit Jahresbeginn im Minus. Die Wall Street ist über das Disruptionspotenzial besorgt.
https://www.…

RE: https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/115944285350406235
Consejo no solicitado: Protejan su información confidencial e importante de las big-tech.

This is the most depressing thing I've read in a long time.
https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening
Of particular note:
"The people building this technology are simultaneously more excited and more frightened than anyone else on the planet. They believe it…

Something Big Is Happening
A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change.

Q&A with New Mexico AG Raúl Torrez about the New Mexico and LA social media trials, Big Tech's "Big Tobacco" moment, what it means for Congress, and more (Tyler Katzenberger/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digit

Der "Big Tech Tobacco Moment", analysiert von @… :
"Es geht um viel mehr. Das Urteil könnte die Big-Tech-Konzerne in ihrem Innersten treffen, weil es nicht auf die Inhalte, sondern die Plattformlogik zielt: Infinite Scroll, Autoplay, Benachrichtigungen, Filter Bubble und Echokammer."
und:
"Wenn die Plattform bei den Teenag…

Da wir ja jetzt alle Big Tech verlassen wollen, so #DIDay und so, und vielleicht gilt das ja auch für Medium Tech: Kennt jemand eine gute, freie Alternative zu #Komoot? Es gibt ja tolle freie Kartenanwendungen wie @…

Al final, te van a obligar a usar la IA para que triunfe la IA.
“Big tech boss tells delegates at Davos that broader global use is essential if technology is to deliver lasting growth”
https://www.

No no, instead of regulating social media and requiring them to remove lies, violence and bullshit we’d rather have adults give up their privacy and anonymity instead, so big tech gets even more data.
While children are pushed to much worse corners of the Internet.
People who demand ID laws are child abusers.

Werk, werk, werk. Follow the Money en De Correspondent willen onaf­hankelijker worden van Amerikaanse tech (en laten iedereen meekijken in het proces).
Sterker nog, ze zoeken een projectmanager. Prima vacature-tekst dit:

Follow the Money wil onafhankelijker worden van Amerikaanse tech (en iedereen mag meekijken)
We berichten kritisch over de Europese afhankelijkheid van big tech. Ondertussen zit ons eigen platform vol met Amerikaanse technologie. Tijd om afscheid te nemen. Kijk mee hoe gemakkelijk of moeilijk dat is. We gaan dat namelijk transparant doen, samen met onze collega’s van De Correspondent. Wil je ons daarbij helpen? Dat kan, want we zoeken per direct een projectmanager voor deze klus.

Dit is heel goed nieuws, want het zet de vlucht van Big Tech in een hogere versnelling. Ik verwacht dat er veel meer gedaan gaat worden om alternatieven te ontwikkelen
https://waag.social/@marleenstikker/116244040976773012

Is this the disturbed view of AI / BigTech optimists, or does he have a point?
"Something Big Is Happening"
#ai

Something Big Is Happening
A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change.

Digital Networks Act: EU verzichtet angeblich auf Milliardenstrafen für Big Tech
Der Digital Networks Act sollte Big Tech zur Kasse bitten. Doch statt harter Regulierung erwarten Netflix, Google und Meta nun Dialog und Handreichungen.

As US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wreak havoc on American communities,
big tech companies have been making themselves indispensable to the increasingly tyrannical state.
Among them is Amazon subsidiary Ring,
the company behind those AI doorbell cameras that have exploded in popularity over the last few years.
Back in October, Ring announced that its devices would soon be looped into a network of Flock AI surveillance cameras.
That network, an inv…

Fury as Amazon Ring Cameras Are Hooked Up to ICE System
Online activists are telling owners of Ring Doorbell cameras that it's time to get rid of their devices, which can be used by ICE.

RE: https://tech.lgbt/@somebitslinks/116058348297956373
I was suspicious of the etymology of molly-guard because it only dates to 1982, and the devices are much older. But Ed Krol from UIUC tells the story about his daughter Molly on page 14 of this PDF.
The only thing about it was that on one side was a big red switch—kid-sized, about 2 inches wide. ... I took my daughter Molly in to work with me. I said, ‘You play with your trucks on the floor while I work,’ and she saw this amazing big red thing and gave it a yank and turned it off.
/cc @…

If I have one more fucking techbro explain to me that actually, I’m the problem for criticising Big Tech (and, yes, fucking Linux distributions and components tied to trillion-dollar corporations is also Big Tech) I am going to scream.
(Actually, I’m just going to block and move on and not give you another thought this lifetime. And maybe also scream.)

Warum weiter Big Tech folgen, wenn’s auch anders geht? Das Whitepaper „Reinvent Social Platforms“ vom SWR zeigt: Das Fediverse passt besser zu unabhängigen Medienwerten als kommerzielle Plattformen. Auf ~60 Seiten werden Chancen, echte Probleme und konkrete Lösungen skizziert. Journalismus braucht digitale Souveränität, nicht nur Klick-Optimierung. #SWR

Ruling in the LA bellwether case could impact Meta and other platforms, opening up a flood of litigation challenging product design and bypassing Section 230 (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/do-back-to-back-courtroom-losses-her…

«Studie—Big Techs KI-Klimaversprechen entpuppen sich als leeres Greenwashing:
Nur 26 Prozent der KI-Versprechen zum Klimaschutz verweisen auf Fachstudien; 36 Prozent kommen ganz ohne Belege aus, so die deutsche NGO Beyond Fossil Fuels»
Dies erinnert mich sicherlich nicht um sonst an die Crypto-Currency Marketing-Verspreche(r)n. Weshalb aber plapern so gut wie alle Medien deren Marketing blind hinterher?
🧐

Studie: Big Tech betreibt KI-Klimagreenwashing
Nur 26 Prozent der KI-Versprechen zum Klimaschutz verweisen auf Fachstudien; 36 Prozent kommen ganz ohne Belege aus, so die deutsche NGO Beyond Fossil Fuels.

Mistral and Accenture sign a multi-year deal to let Accenture deploy Mistral's models for its clients; Mistral has deals with IBM, Cisco, SAP, ASML, and others (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mistral-ai-lan

Zo typerend dit,
"DNB laat na vragen in eerste instantie weten dat e-mail niet toegankelijk is voor Microsoft omdat de berichten ‘end-to-end beveiligd blijven’. Geconfronteerd met het oordeel van security-experts, erkent de bank vervolgens dat dit antwoord onjuist is en dat ‘technische toegang’ tot de data in ‘uitzonderlijke scenario’s’ mogelijk is."

De Nederlandsche Bank waarschuwt voor big tech, maar draait zelf op Microsoft
De Nederlandsche Bank maakt volop gebruik van systemen van Microsoft, waarin de Amerikanen kunnen meekijken. Bovendien schroefde DNB de beveiliging van e-mail verder terug. Terwijl de bank eerder waarschuwde voor afhankelijkheid van big tech en het ‘gure geopolitieke klimaat’.

The EU gives Google a six-month deadline to lift technical barriers to rival AI search assistants on Android and give key data to other search engine providers (Samuel Stolton/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-…

Google Android Told by EU to Open Up to Rival AI Systems
Google was handed a six-month European Union deadline to lift technical barriers to rival AI search assistants on Android and give key data to other search engine providers in the latest round of its Big Tech crackdown.

FTM heeft een nuttig artikel (nuttig als in: lastig, anti-autoritair) over BZK en NLdigital.
"BZK wees branchevereniging NLdigital aan als ‘poortwachter’ voor het organiseren van de gesprekken van het aanjaagteam Cloud. En die keuze is opmerkelijk. Anders dan de naam doet vermoeden, maakt de belangenbehartiger met ruim 500 leden zich namelijk ook hard voor Amerikaanse belangen van leden als Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM en Oracle.”

Van het ministerie mag big tech de gesprekken over digitale autonomie zelf leiden
Nederland wil minder afhankelijk worden van big tech, maar Binnenlandse Zaken laat de gesprekken daarover leiden door een branchevereniging die de belangen van big tech uitdraagt. De Nederlandse cloudaanbieders zijn bij de start buitenspel gezet. ‘Dit is als de tabakslobby laten meeschrijven aan anti-rookwetgeving.’

Digital-Oligarchie - Der Rechtsruck der Big-Tech-Bosse
Big-Tech-Bosse vertreten verstärkt rechte Ideen und nehmen vermehrt politischen Einfluss. In ihren ideologischen Konzepten und in der aktuellen US-Politik macht der Politikwissenschaftler Christopher Coenen faschistische Tendenzen aus.
📻 https:…

Der Rechtsruck der Big-Tech-Bosse
In der Ideologie der US-Tech-Bosse und in der aktuellen US-Politik macht der Politikwissenschaftler Christopher Coenen faschistische Tendenzen aus.

Over the past year, tech industry lobby groups have used their lavish budgets to aggressively push for the deregulation of the EU’s digital rulebook.
The intensity of this policy battle is also reflected in the fact that Big Tech companies have on average more than one lobby meeting per day with EU Commission officials.  
This lobbying offensive appears to be paying off.
Recently, a string of policy-makers have called for a pause of the Artificial Intelligence Act,
a…

Big Tech lobby budgets hit record levels | Corporate Europe Observatory
New figures show that the digital industry as a whole is now spending €151 million a year on lobbying the EU, a major increase to what was already considerable firepower.

heise | Tschüss, Big Tech: Gmail-Postfach exportieren und E-Mails löschen
Sie haben Ihren E-Mail-Anbieter gewechselt? Dann müssen Sie jetzt noch Ihren Datenschatz aus dem alten Postfach heben. Wir erklären, wie das geht.

US Big Tech companies have been on an energy-related hiring spree; Workforce.AI says Microsoft has hired 570 people with energy-related expertise since 2022 (Tasmin Lockwood/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/big-tech-google-microsoft-energy-hiring-ai.html…

Big Tech is poaching energy talent to fuel its AI ambitions
Hires of energy-related talent by Big Tech was 30% higher in 2025 than pre-AI levels.

Big Tech ist Meister der Steuervermeidung. Die Politik reagiert mit einem „Plattform-Soli“. Doch laut Michael Kolain greift die Idee zu kurz: Sonderabgaben haben enge verfassungsrechtliche Grenzen – und selbst wenn sie kommen, bleibt die eigentliche Frage ungelöst: Wie besteuert man digitale Gewinne wirklich dort, wo sie entstehen?

A healthy (in body and mind),
active, frugal, sociable, mostly offline citizen
who is highly educated and informed, in full control of their data, avoiding Big Tech’s platforms and algorithms,
with a positive self-esteem and self-image,
is probably persona non grata for the tech billionaires.
But a small, insignificant nuisance, like a fly
– they don’t care about ONE.
But imagine having thousands,
then hundreds of thousands,
then millio…

A new way to describe the Fediverse and its opposition to Big Tech
I may have finally found a compelling, accessible way to describe the Fediverse - and make it appealing to people not familiar with it.

SOTU: Trump says he told tech companies they must build their own power plants for their data centers; sources: the WH expects to formalize the effort in March (Richard Valdmanis/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/tr

A look at the fundamental questions facing OpenAI: its models have a very large user base but very narrow engagement, incumbents are matching its tech, and more (Benedict Evans)
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/2/19/how-will-openai-compete-nkg2x

How will OpenAI compete? — Benedict Evans
OpenAI has some big questions. It doesn’t have unique tech. It has a big user base, but with limited engagement and stickiness and no network effect. The incumbents have matched the tech and are leveraging their product and distribution. And a lot of the value and leverage will come from new experie

«Weg von Google und Paypal — EU will digital unabhängiger werden:
Die gängigen digitalen Dienstleistungen kommen in der Regel von US-amerikanischen Big-Tech-Unternehmen wie Alphabet oder Meta. Unter Trump ist das ein Problem»
Ich wohne nicht in der EU und deswegen wird dies wahrscheinlich in meiner Umgebung nicht so schnell von den US-Konzerne lösen. BigTechs haben auch Standorte in der CH.
🔊

Weg von Google und Paypal – Wie die EU digital unabhängiger werden will
Suchmaschinen, online Bezahlen, Cloud-Server: Die meisten digitalen Dienstleistungen in der EU übernehmen Big-Tech-Konzerne aus den USA. Die Abhängigkeit ist ein Problem.

Q&A with Skild AI CEO Deepak Pathak on building a general-purpose brain for robots, standing out among big tech's robotics efforts, the path to AGI, and more (Alex Heath/Sources)
https://sources.news/p/skild-ai-ceo-robotics-brain-davos

Skild AI's CEO on building one brain for every robot
My full Sources Live interview with Skild AI CEO Deepak Pathak from Davos.

It was not so long ago that working with the military on potentially harmful technology was seen as a red line for many big tech workers.
In 2018, thousands of #Google employees launched a protest against a program to analyze drone footage for the DoD called #Project

Apple, whose capital expenditure is just a fraction of its peers, is the only Big Tech company that saw capex decline YoY in Q4, decreasing 19% to $2.37B (Rani Molla/Sherwood News)
https://sherwood.news/tech/apple-is-the-only-big-tech-company-…

Apple is the only Big Tech company whose capex declined last quarter
One of these companies is not like the others.

Tech billionaires are leveraging tens of millions of dollars
to influence California politics
in a marked uptick from their previous participation in affairs at the state capitol.
Behemoths such as #Google and #Meta are getting involved in campaigns for November’s elections,
as are venture capitalist…

Arizona sues Kalshi for allegedly operating an illegal gambling business and unlawfully facilitating betting on elections; Kalshi faces a similar suit in Nevada (Anna Washenko/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/arizona-

Arizona attorney general sues Kalshi on illegal gambling charges
Kalshi has been sued by Arizona's attorney general, the latest state-level accusation that the prediction market is an unlicensed gambling business.

Analysis: the top US tech companies spent $109M on DC lobbying in 2025, topping $100M for the first time; Meta spent $26.29M, Amazon $17.78M, and Google $13.1M (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-…

Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Adobe, and Match sign a voluntary pledge to share threat intelligence on scammers abusing their services (Sam Sabin/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/16/tech-companies-scam-accord-google-meta-amazon…

Exclusive: Big Tech companies band together to fight global scams
Scammers have only become more organized and impactful in recent years, forcing tech companies to rethink their strategies for protecting their users.

The World Economic Forum in Davos is now dominated by tech giants, whose interests shunt aside topics like climate change, as Trump and AI take center stage (Peter S. Goodman/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/business/davos-trump.html

A.I., Big Tech and Trump Shine Most Brightly at the Davos Spectacle
The World Economic Forum is now dominated by global technology companies whose interests shunt aside most others.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft reported a collective $1.1T backlog of cloud computing revenue in their latest quarterly earnings, including Microsoft's $625B (Jon Keegan/Sherwood News)
https://sherwood.news/tech/big-techs-usd1-1-trillion-cloud-computing-backl…

Big Tech’s $1.1 trillion cloud computing backlog
White-hot demand for cloud computing has created a backlog of revenue that Big Cloud can’t fulfill due to infrastructure constraints.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson says the agency is examining Big Tech's acqui-hires to make sure "they are not an attempt to get around" its merger review process (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

A look at the US tech industry's effort to influence Californian politics: fighting the 5% billionaire tax, super PACs, and seeking a new tech-friendly governor (Dara Kerr/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/15/californ…

DeepSeek researchers detail a new mHC architecture they used to train 3B, 9B, and 27B models, finding it scaled without adding significant computational burden (Vincent Chow/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article

DeepSeek opens 2026 with paper signalling race to train bigger models for less
DeepSeek has published a technical paper co-authored by founder Liang Wenfeng proposing a rethink of its core deep learning architecture.

Poland's President Karol Nawrocki vetoes legislation meant to enforce the EU's DSA in Poland, arguing it would grant excessive powers to government officials (Wojciech Kość/Politico)
https://www.politico.eu/article/polish-pre

Polish president aligns with Trump to block Brussels’ Big Tech law
Nawrocki called EU social media law “Orwellian,” echoing Washington’s main line of attack.

Sources: ByteDance plans to spend about $14B on Nvidia's AI chips in 2026, an increase of about 18% from 2025 (Wency Chen/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3338191/bytedance-pour-u…

Exclusive | ByteDance to pour US$14 billion into Nvidia chips in 2026 as AI demand surges
Chinese unicorn’s computing needs have climbed across its portfolio of popular apps, cloud unit Volcano Engine and large language models.

GPT-5.3-Codex and Claude Opus 4.6 can handle the full app development lifecycle on their own, a sign of what's coming for most knowledge work within five years (Matt Shumer)
https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

Something Big Is Happening
A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change.

A look at "tokenmaxxing", a status game where employees at a number of companies compete on leaderboards to show how much AI they're using (Kevin Roose/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/technol

More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use.
At a number of companies, employees compete on leaderboards to show how much A.I. they’re using. They’re racking up big bills along the way.

Google unveils Home updates to fix a long list of annoyances and idiosyncrasies, and debuts Live Search to let Gemini analyze and describe live camera feeds (Thomas Ricker/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/888008/big-google-home-updat…

Big Google Home update lets Gemini describe live camera feeds
Google Home updates fix a long list of annoyances and introduces Live Search to give Gemini the power to describe what your cameras see.

The US Senate passed COPPA 2.0 again, which would create new protections for young users; the bill now heads to the House, where it has struggled to pass (Anna Washenko/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/coppa-20-passes-the-sen…

COPPA 2.0 passes the Senate again, unanimously this time
Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, aims to create new online protections for younger users and their personal data.

Anthropic partners with CodePath to help redesign computer coding curricula at hundreds of US community and state colleges, integrating Claude AI tools (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-take…