Welcome to the fight for
Individual Autonomy Online!

This website is an online archive of all of the different data leverage resources put together by the Future Netizens. This site is for YOU and to help you understand how to best leverage your personal data into a better online experience.

We really believe in the power of the Internet. As we as a species face some of the greatest existential threats humanity has encountered thus far, we know that the power and speed of the Internet can be instrumental to our collective survival and future. This is the age of information, and people should have access to all of the resources, perspectives, and histories as possible, especially as we chart our course forward.

But that's now how the Internet works right now.The vast majority of digital experiences are governed by different algorithms designed to encourage maximum user engagement, and turn a huge profit for the companies implementing them. (@google, Meta, Amazon, Apple) These systems and companies have long been questioned for their ethical choices/values when making these systems that profit off our most private data (as coined by Shoshanna Zuboff in 2019 as surveillance capitalism,) but that’s not what is most troubling here. As someone who’s part of the generation that’s been on the internet since I was a literal child, our algorithms behave have been honed in and refined as we’ve grown up.

Because they’ve had so many years to observe and record us, our algorithms are pigeon-holing us. Everything from the products we’re suggested to purchase and other users we’re suggested to connect with online, to what news articles are pushed to the top of our feeds versus at the bottom are controlled by these systems. The internet is so exciting because it is an unprecedented amount of information that can be acquired with unprecedented ease, and yet so many of us are not using it the way we could be, and we aren’t even really aware of that.

So this is where the Future Netizens come in

It’s about not being complicit in this part of how our worldview is being shaped and consciously approaching how we use these platforms differently, and potentially using them to make more informed decisions about the future.

Happy Data Striking!