• “We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.”
– apocryphal quote attributed to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (who wrote similar thoughts but not on those exact words)

• Democracy vs. oligarchy vs. plutocracy vs. kakistocracy

• The tech oligarchy has been here for years (past Techtonic guest Brian Merchant, Jan 17, 2025)

• Elon Musk did the Nazi salute on live TV to prove he could (also by Brian Merchant, Jan 21, 2025):

Four of the five richest men in the world, worth over $1 trillion, beaming in the front row, the fifth already firmly in Trump’s pocket.

That the men in charge of the companies most responsible for destroying journalism — Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Musk himself — were in the front row of the inauguration, clapping for Trump, on the same day Musk made his salute, is telling. . . . And Jeff Bezos, the fourth tech titan in the front row seats, can tell his newspapers to spike op-eds supporting the other party, or editorial cartoons criticizing the big man.

• Pwnallthethings on Bluesky (Jan 21, 2025): “An odd thing with ... ‘is it a Nazi salute’ ... is this reflexive need by tons of people to believe something can be bad only if it was understood by the person as bad, but since we cannot know to metaphysical certainty their mind, it can’t be. This is a standard that exists in absolutely no other circumstances. If someone repeatedly says racist things they will (hopefully) be fired, even if in some metaphysical sense nobody can read their mind to ‘prove’ they knew it.”

• Bluesky user trillgabi (Jan 22, 2025): “Google, Youtube, Fitbit, Waze, Calico, SpaceX, Nest, Whatsapp, IG, Threads, IMDb, Twitch, Audible, Wholefoods, AWS, Zappos, MGM, Ring were also all present.”

• Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy (by past Techtonic guest Jason Koebler, 404 Media, Jan 21, 2025):

Zuckerberg, Musk, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were all in attendance at Trump’s inauguration Monday. There is now no major corporate-owned social media platform that is not aligned with Trump or beholden to him in some way, and nearly every American is on at least one of these platforms.

The TikTok ban highlights, as we’ve seen before, that businesses and accounts built on these centralized, corporate social media platforms are incredibly fragile and can be taken away at any moment, whether by government action, algorithm tweaks that destroy reach, a platform deciding that a specific account does not comply with its ever-changing rules and political systems . . .

• Mark Lemley on LinkedIn (Jan 20, 2025): "I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness. . . . I cannot in good conscience serve as their lawyer any longer."

• Open letter to Mark Zuckerberg by Pixelfed founder Daniel Supernault (Jan 18, 2025):

Open letter to Mark Zuckerberg

Dear Mark,

I hope this finds you well. I noticed something interesting today - it seems Instagram is blocking links to my little open-source project. You know, the one that lets people share photos without harvesting their personal data or forcing algorithmic feeds on them.

I have to admit, I'm flattered. Who would've thought a small team of volunteers could build something that would catch your attention? We're just trying to give people a choice in how they share their memories online. No VCs, no surveillance capitalism, just code and community.

[...]

Every time you block a link to our platform, you remind people why we built it in the first place. Your action tells them there are alternatives worth exploring, ones that respect their privacy and agency. So thank you, Mark. You've turned our little project into a symbol of resistance against digital monopolies.

[...]

Best regards,
Daniel Supernault

• From Chris Trottier on Mastodon (Jan 21, 2025):

Here’s a list of ActivityPub services that are not Twitter-like, along with a description of what each service does: [below is just an excerpt -mh]

• Pixelfed - image sharing
• Peertube - video sharing
• Bookwyrm - book reviews
• Nextcloud - data storage
• Mobilizion - events