In his book 1984, George Orwell detailed a dystopian world wherein a person or persona called “Big Brother” saw everything that people did and where the central government pushed its agenda through propaganda, spying, monitoring, and thought controls. That book was published in 1949. It is now 2017, and while we do not exactly have […]
Banish Big Brother ⋆ Empowering communities to resist digital surveillance
Protect your privacy and challenge the spread of surveillance technology. Find resources, strategies, and actionable tools to counter smart city surveillance and defend personal freedom. Take a stand against Big Brother today.
Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus group.
With his 5,800-word manifesto on “Building Global Community,” the Facebook C.E.O. seems to be easing ever more into his role as benevolent dictator of the media universe.
Nicky Case | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Thousands of AI-written, edited or ‘polished’ books are being sold – an eerie echo of Orwell’s ‘novel-writing machines’
In ‘1984,’ George Orwell envisaged a world in which books were a mass-produced commodity no different from ‘jam and bootlaces.’
The Shapeshifter’s Little Brother
On Mark Zuckerberg’s AI manifesto—aka nine blog posts in a trenchcoat.
Rudy Fraser on Blacksky, Mutual Aid & Reclaiming Social Media
Fascism | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
On Digital Disinformation and Democratic Myths – MediaWell
For two years, from 2015 to 2017, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) operated a “Blacktivist” Facebook page. The Blacktivist account posed as an organic, grassroots online activism site, amplifying and contributing to the Black Lives Matter movement. It shared news, memes, and perspectives about racial injustice in America. Blacktivist was the most prominent of the IRA-generated Facebook pages, with over 6.18 million “interactions” recorded across its top 500 posts. The page had 360,000 likes, more than the verified Black Lives Matter account on Facebook (O’Sullivan and Byers 2017). In congressional hearings about Russian online disinformation and propaganda campaigns, poster-sized versions of Blacktivist posts and memes were on prominent display. Blacktivist stands as a warning sign of the sheer volume of online disinformation activities by foreign actors in US politics.
Social Media Vs Democracy
Palantir's social media manifesto is a blueprint for technofascism
The surveillance firm’s viral X post calls for hard power, conscription and the end of pluralism. AI expert and academic Mark Coeckelbergh on what happens when technology becomes the gateway to authoritarianism
Decentralized Social Media | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
The Woman Who Predicted Tech Fascism — Paulina Borsook Was Right
Kill the Internet | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis (Published 2018)
Russian meddling, data sharing, hate speech — the social network faced one scandal after another. This is how Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg responded.
NOW
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology. Reading time: ~2 minute read | Published: Jun 15, 2024 | Updated: Aug 27, 2026
Institute of Network Cultures | Ben Grosser: Planning the Exodus from Platform Realism
Thinking about the current state of platforms, I’m reminded of Mark Fisher’s articulation of capitalist realism, the idea that we don’t imagine or build alternatives to capitalism because we can no longer envision a world without it. Big tech, in a few short years, has managed to instill within the public a similar state of platform realism. So many are unable to imagine how global communication, media, search, etc. could ever function without the platforms. Despite a growing malaise, it’s become difficult for many to consider a world without big tech platforms as a viable conception of the future.
