When the tech platforms promised a future of "connection," they were lying. They said their …
But there are at least two ways in which tech is exceptional:
First, tech is foundational. The questions of tech monopoly aren’t inherently more important than, say, the climate emergency or gender and racial discrimination. But tech—free, fair, open tech—is a precondition for winning those other fights. Winning the fight for better tech won’t solve those other problems, but losing the fight for better tech extinguishes any hope of winning those more important fights.
Second, tech is interoperable. That means that, long before we break up Facebook or Google or Microsoft or Apple, we can offer immediate, profound relief to the people whose freedom of motion is hemmed in by tech’s walled gardens. We don’t have to wait for breakups to allow someone to install a third-party app, or bypass heavy-handed (or overly tolerant) moderation, or overcome the algorithmic burial of their material. We can do that right now,with interop.