I consistently adhere to my daily quota of five entities. However, I’m not referring to fruits and vegetables but rather the prominent “Big Five” technology corporations – Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook), and Apple. These tech giants exert significant influence over various aspects of my everyday life, as well as yours, given their pervasive presence in the digital landscape.
Initially, I naively believed that undertaking a 24-hour Big Tech detox would be simple. I assumed that avoiding Amazon purchases for a day and switching from a smartphone to a basic flip phone would suffice. After all, I wouldn’t need to completely disconnect from all technology, just steer clear of the Big Five conglomerates. Yet, my assumption was swiftly proven wrong – the task was far from feasible. The extent of these companies’ monopoly on our digital existence only becomes apparent when one attempts to evade their reach. I was unaware that popular services like Netflix, online banking, and even the news platforms I frequent daily are either hosted by these tech giants or rely on their technologies.
To highlight the dominance of these tech behemoths, the Economic Security Project, an American charity, developed “Big Tech Detective,” a free browser extension. This tool enables users to identify and avoid websites that utilize technology from Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. Upon installing this extension on my laptop, I quickly realized the overwhelming presence of these companies in the internet’s infrastructure.
Initially, the Big Tech Detective functioned effectively, almost too effectively, to the point where browsing the internet became nearly impossible. The revelations were staggering – every website I attempted to access, including news outlets like The Telegraph, was inaccessible due to their reliance on resources provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Facebook, or Microsoft. This restriction extended to essential tools such as emails and Google Docs, hindering my ability to carry out tasks essential for my work, such as article writing.
I candidly informed an editor that I couldn’t access the necessary programs due to my self-imposed “Big Tech diet.” It quickly became evident that without the support of Big Tech, executing my job – or virtually any job reliant on email or word-processing software – would be exceedingly challenging. After a fruitless attempt to navigate a Big Tech-free online environment, the reality of the internet’s foundation on just a handful of companies became glaringly apparent.
In a similar vein, tech reporter Kashmir Hill embarked on a six-week mission in 2019 to eliminate the tech giants from her life and explore alternatives. Using a custom VPN to block these companies individually, she encountered insurmountable obstacles. Hill noted that much of the digital realm became off-limits, emphasizing the indispensable role of Amazon and Google in the internet’s infrastructure.
Lawmakers are increasingly cognizant of the tech giants’ dominance. Recently, the EU initiated investigations into Apple, Google, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), empowering the EU to regulate Big Tech if unfair advantages are suspected. Last year, Brussels identified six companies, including Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok owner ByteDance, as “gatekeepers” necessitating additional oversight.
Despite my efforts to adhere to a Big Tech-free lifestyle within a 24-hour timeframe, the omnipresence of these tech giants posed significant challenges. The reliance on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft’s technologies is deeply ingrained in the core of nearly every website globally. Amazon, in addition to dominating online marketplace sales in the US, holds the title of the world’s largest cloud technology provider. The prevalence of Google in global search traffic, a staggering 91%, underscores the extent of these companies’ influence.
In conclusion, my brief experiment with Big Tech abstinence served as a stark reminder of the pervasive nature of these tech giants in our daily lives. While alternatives exist, they too often rely on the very technologies we seek to avoid. This crash course in Big Tech detox highlighted the inextricable link between our digital dependencies and the tech conglomerates, prompting a swift return to the comfort of digital convenience.