There's a definite grand plan in my mind about what I want to do with this website. In short, this will be a launchpad for several projects I have lined up regarding people's online presence, freedom of expression and efficient use of the internet.
My goal is to reveal how tech giants are hacking our brains through persistent use of technology and advertisements to manipulate our emotional state and make tons of money. They accomplish this using three tools:
When a tech giant can lock you into using all three, you essentially relinquish all your user and consumer rights and enter a walled garden where the owner may do with your online presence and data stemming from it as he pleases. Even worse, terms of use can be changed at any moment to further benefit the owner, and if you're heavily invested in that particular ecosystem, you effectively can't leave, which is known as "captive customer". This is fully intentional but it's all right because you can choose an alternative, right? What happens when kids are herded in these closed ecosystems and they never experience an alternative?
To drive adoption, access to proprietary software, online services and dedicated hardware can be given out for free, just like a mousetrap has a juicy little piece of bait to lure in the hungry squeakers. Indeed, tech giants have been providing all those for free to schools to create captive customers from as early age as possible. Bright colors, big pictures and easily understandable settings and error codes make the tech giant ecosystem seem kid-friendly and trustworthy; turn off your brain and just let the big daddy company do all the work. Why else do you think all modern browsers use such simplified interfaces and constantly prune options? Some software even started including smiley faces in settings and error messages to let you know if you're doing it right. It's by design, it's all aimed at hooking kids and dumbing down adults to the point they feel helpless like a kid.
This simplified ecosystem results in a user that can only perceive the lowest common denominator, can't exercise any control over his online existence and participates in a muddled internet culture, one where everything is subordinate to The Algorithm, whether it's views, likes or subscriber counts. You can see this in action on the world's most popular video hosting website, where content creators have started including long-winded filler jokes a-la Family Guy in their videos just because that site's recommendation algorithm values longer content, since that makes viewers stay on the website longer and pads the user metrics. All tech giants strive towards the same kind of sterile, dumbed down environment where the user is kept on a short leash and then constantly surveilled, henpecked and silenced. Keep in mind that this is primarily aimed at children, who don't know any better.
My plan is to create online services, such as social media and cloud storage, that will come with user-modifiable communication channels. Instead of using ready-made systems that are "good enough", you'll be expected to communicate with other users offline and arrange for your own connection route. For example, two users could send each other their contact details through physical mail or advertise them through graffiti, which means that a tech giant will have to physically surveil users to spy on their online communication. By simply adding an element of random physicality to our online communication, tech giants are left stumped and any attempts to spy on internet users will absolutely not scale, making them bankrupt if they attempt it. Afterwards, I plan to make a browser and a banking platform. I have no idea whether any of these are achievable in this decade or feasible from a technical standpoint but my soul yearns to try it out and so I shall find some way of achieving it.
What I'm doing here is an affront to not just one US tech giant, but all of them at once. I fully expect to be depersoned from US online services and roasted by US-based mainstream media at some point as tech giants start feeling desperation to retain their power, though by that time I anticipate that my project will be fully online and provide everyone (including me) with a censorship-free, decentralized and self-sustainable set of online services based in EU, outside the reach of US tech giants. I do think my services should from the start be made to appeal to EU regulators, who have already shown they detest the supremacy of US tech giants in the EU digital space. This is why I made this website in such a fashion that it doesn't track the user, doesn't serve ads or otherwise take away your control; EU regulators are much more likely to defend me from US tech giants. Anyway, I plan to take this project one step at a time and just gradually build on a solid ground for the future we all deserve. Are you seeing this? This is what online rebellion looks like.