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Rise Against Big Tech: A Movement For Collective Digital Freedom

Breaking Big Tech’s grip means more than new tools, it’s a cultural shift toward collective infrastructure, shared values, and digital autonomy says Dirk Slater.

Rise Against Big Tech: A Movement For Collective Digital Freedom
Photo by Kyle Hinkson / Unsplash

By Dirk Slater, FabRiders with input from the RABT Coalition

Across social justice and digital rights movements, urgency is growing: Big Tech platforms have come to shape nearly every aspect of our digital lives, often through surveillance, exploitation, and monopolistic control that deepens divides, erodes trust and isolates communities. Breaking that dependence is not simply about switching software; it is a cultural and strategic shift that demands shared values, collective action, and long-term planning. Our recent Rise Against Big Tech (RABT) workshop, organized by the RABT Coalition as part of InfraRed, explored why this shift matters and revealed both what’s broken and what’s possible if communities work together with collective values, strategic intent, and practical tools. The workshop surfaced a shared challenge: understanding not just why we must move away from Big Tech, but how to do it in ways that strengthen mission, culture, and collaboration:

Migrating Away from Big Tech: How to Approach It

Mission Alignment:

A migration plan needs to begin by asking: Does this serve our organization's strategy, values, and mission? Every group at the workshop discussed how critical it was to anchor technology transitions in long-term goals for impact and justice, never as a reaction to temporary frustration.

Migration should become an opportunity to deepen organizational culture, strengthen autonomy, and foster creativity. When guided by mission, strategy, and collective ownership, groups can clarify trade-offs during transition, build widespread commitment, and allocate resources, ensuring that training and onboarding support everyone in making the shift. 

For many groups, especially those based in the United States, this decision carries an added sense of urgency. Under heightened government surveillance and increasing partnerships between state agencies and private tech firms like Palantir and Babel Street, organizations involved in activism, migration, or human rights work face tangible risks when using mainstream platforms. Moving to privacy-respecting and independent technologies is not only about aligning with organizational values—it has become a necessary step for self-protection and safeguarding the people and communities these groups serve.

Collective Transition:

Big Tech isolates users by making convenience personal and addictive. Moving your bookmarks, contacts, shared folders, and years of random Google Docs is frustrating. But escaping big tech’s grip requires collective action—both within and between organizations. It’s not enough for one team or one organization to switch tools; meaningful change demands coordination across networks, coalitions, and partnerships so the groups we collaborate with can transition together. Migrating away from tools like Zoom, Google Docs, or WhatsApp means reimagining the digital spaces where our movements communicate, organize, and share knowledge. Building shared agreements, accessible alternatives, and common practices across organizations transforms migration from a logistical challenge into a movement-wide act of solidarity and digital autonomy.

Cultural Change:

Conversations about migration often start with the practical: which tools to use, what to replace, what will break. But real change begins with a shared understanding of why this matters. Big Tech’s dominance has reshaped how we communicate, collaborate, and even think about community, often in ways that reward surveillance, control, and convenience over care. Talking openly about these dynamics helps colleagues connect the technical to the ethical and turns frustration into shared purpose.

Barriers to exiting Big Tech abound, including onboarding, workflow changes, data migration headaches, and usability gaps in alternatives. Older users, those with limited technical proficiency, and entire networks may require additional support. However, the long-term benefits are substantial—encompassing better privacy, genuine control, and community-driven growth. When organizations treat technology as part of their broader mission, rather than as a background utility, they can use each transition to strengthen collaboration, autonomy, and collective resilience.

To aid this transition, organizers of the RABT workshop introduced participants to a curriculum designed by FabRiders to help organizations start their own conversations about moving away from Big Tech. This resource provides a step-by-step guide that organizations can use to bring the conversation home: building buy-in, understanding, and common cause for mission-driven migration.

The RABT Workshop as a Case Study

The workshop drew around 130 people from diverse backgrounds, geographies and organizations. Using Jitsi Meet for conferencing and Etherpads for collaborative note-taking, participants ensured transparent documentation and collective ownership of ideas and decisions, modeling some of the principles I touched on earlier. The hope for us, as organizers, was to set a strong example: moving away from Big Tech requires not just swapping out tools, but building new habits and cultures where everyone participates.

From Curiosity to Entrapment

We started the workshop by asking participants to reflect on their initial experiences with computers. Those stories centered on hope, curiosity, and the creative promise of technology. Over time, participants said their optimism had turned into apprehension. They mapped how platforms they had once helped them connect and create now function to surveil, control, and isolate individuals. Big Tech thrives by drawing each of us in individually, designing addictive features and seamless experiences that make alternatives feel daunting or risky. Unlearning these patterns, participants noted, is as much about changing culture as it is about switching software and platform providers.

Intersectionality, Surprises, and Hope

Participants found the collection of stories surprisingly intersectional—connecting tech liberation with climate, health, anti-imperialism, and democracy. This workshop reaffirmed that the most resilient momentum is collective: strategic engagement and shared ownership carry organizations through daunting challenges.

Conclusion: Building Collective Infrastructure for Movement Technology

The RABT movement runs on infrastructure designed for collectivity and mission-alignment, building on the scaffolding that allows organizations to learn from each other, share resources and communicate at scale. Its focus is not only on replacing Big Tech tools but on:

  • Decision frameworks: to help organizations evaluate tools against their mission, strategy and values, ensuring that technical choices reinforce collective purpose.
  • Practical guides and resources: riseagainstbig.tech offers migration resources, ethical decision-making tools, and tailored "harm reduction" approaches if full divestment isn't yet practical.
  • Peer learning and support: through dedicated onboarding and networked experimentation, helping organizations share lessions, troubleshoot challenges, and build capacity together.
  • Community channels: connect with members across movements and access shared learning spaces.

Migrating away from Big Tech is neither quick nor easy. However, with a collective strategy, dedicated resources, and curriculum-backed conversations, each transition becomes a tool for deepening values, empowering communities, and advancing organizational goals. Resilience grows not from technical decisions, but from how those decisions serve the broader mission and ability to execute a strategic plan.

Join the movement:


 For resources and support for your organization, visit https://riseagainstbig.tech, then join the movement to make technology a tool for liberation and justice, not private profit:

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