We should build tools

The current state of technology is one of ambivalence. We’re seeing major hardware breakthroughs, for example, around renewable energy and batteries. But it has never been clearer how software companies are ruling (and ruining) the world. Between the 10 most valuable companies in the world, 5 are software companies, and this evaluation is a reflection of how much society around the globe depends on these companies to function.

Let’s say you own a restaurant. How does a customer find you? They can try searching for the name of your restaurant on Google, but I bet most people would try to find it on Google Maps or, more likely, Instagram. Think about the last time you were trying to figure out if a restaurant was open, how to get there, what is on their menu, or if you need a reservation - you probably went on one of these services to check for that information. If you’re a business owner and you don’t have an account on either of these platforms, does your business even exist?

What this means is that both Alphabet and Meta are major stakeholders of millions of businesses around the world, and these businesses have an obligation to follow the rules set by these tech giants to stay relevant, making sure the algorithm can find and feature them. Otherwise, their venture will most likely fail.

On a personal level, if you want to keep in touch with your friends, do you have many alternatives besides Meta-related products (Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp)? And if you want to try alternatives, can you find your friends there? It’s really difficult to avoid these closed platforms if you want to connect and meet new people. You have to feed their data silos by posting your personal updates, and you have to watch ads in between friends’ updates just to be able to keep up with your acquaintances.

This abusive relationship with the technology platforms we use daily has a specific name: technofeudalism.

Here’s how Yanis Varoufakis describes it:

The big tech companies—Meta, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet—control our attention and mediate our transactions, turning humans into digital serfs incessantly posting, scrolling, and buying on their platforms. Rather than chasing profits that derive from labor, the tech overlords, whom he calls “cloudalists,” extract “rents.”

When I think about “digital fiefdoms”, I think about platforms that can only make money out of walled gardens: you need to create an account to access content, and can never own your data. You can only access the platform through their own applications. You can’t choose how the content is displayed to you. The platform owns everything. When it comes to creating an application, how can you create a product and not have it become a digital walled garden service? You create tools.

As software developers, we should be aiming towards building applications that don’t try to hold the user hostage. We should be creating applications that help users to achieve their intended objective and get out of the way. Let users own their data, and access their data however they want to. This is what we do best, we create tools for other professionals to use. We should be creating interoperable applications instead of creating closed ecosystems that force users to use it in a way that mines their privacy data to sell ads. More open protocols and less attention-seeking algorithms.