I have been thinking a lot about digital sovereignty lately and how quickly the internet is turning into a weird blend of surreal slop and centralized control. It feels like we are losing the ability to tell what is real because of how easy it is for trillionaire tech companies to flood our feeds with whatever they want.
Specifically I am curious about what I call “kirkification” which is the way these tools make it trivial to warp a person’s digital identity into a caricature. It starts with a joke or a face swap but it ends with people losing control over how they are perceived online.
If we want to protect ourselves and our local communities from being manipulated by these black box models how do we actually do it?
I want to know if anyone here has tried moving away from the cloud toward sovereign compute. Is hosting our own communication and media solutions actually a viable way to starve these massive models of our data? Can a small town actually manage its own digital utility instead of just being a data farm for big tech?
Also how do we even explain this to normal people who are not extremely online? How can we help neighbors or the elderly recognize when they are being nudged by an algorithm or seeing a digital caricature?
It seems like we should be aiming for a world of a million millionaires rather than just a room full of trillionaires but the technical hurdles like isp throttling and protocol issues make that bridge hard to build.
Has anyone here successfully implemented local first solutions that reduced their reliance on big tech ai? I am looking for ways to foster cognitive immunity and keep our data grounded in meatspace.
Losing control of online perception has always been there. Microsoft paint, then photoshop and now AI. Not a whole lot u can do without a massive pr team/botfarm.
Luckily most of us aren’t famous enough that online slander affects our real lives. Unless we go full black mirror with the real life social media rating system.
As for local first solutions, that’s going to be hard. Most businesses, where I live, are managed by IT companies who use AWS, Intune and the all of the usual suspects.
As long as there is no foss competition to large scale IT management, then it will be difficult to sway corporate that wants “just works”. Here is small chance to shill Zorin Grid. Looking forward to that release.
On a smaller scale individuals will have a better chance. Even if it’s just convincing your coffeeshop boss to switch to only/libre office.
Completely running self hosted communities in cities etc… that’s would be the end game. I think education and parental upbringing will have to become a major part of that. If every school and household has a linux pc and a nas where it’s the normal way of doing things… That would shift future tech use.