Why Big Tech Detox?
Big Tech Detox is an independent publication launched in March 2026 to address the urgent need for non-technical people to be able to navigate the modern web and use digital products while enjoying privacy, security and a positive experience.
Why now?
Big Tech is selling our metadata and scraping everything we create and share to train proprietary models while providing services which are ever more expensive and enshittified, with ads everywhere, meaning they extract from us twice, both in money and in data.
On the other side, Big Tech has done an incredible job of lowering the friction to using its own products and suites in its quest to profit while creating lock-in to discourage us from leaving.
We think the solution to this problem already exists in community-based software and passion projects available around the web, but that are not yet widely known as household names. As the great writer of cyberpunk William Gibson said “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” We are here to help distribute this knowledge.
While it may seem daunting or impossible at first glance, if we all make small changes to our daily digital lives we believe we can make a real difference together toward building a better digital future, where we all have ownership of our data, pay fairly for our digital products, have more choice over our privacy options and contribute to a greener environment while enjoying great user experiences.
Join the Detox Movement!
Our team includes backgrounds in Cybersecurity and User Experience Design with a focus on translating critical technical concepts into bite sized, easy to understand, and (hopefully) fun content.
When we use software that is made by Big Tech we get trapped in toxic ecosystems that increasingly extracts money, data and time from us, funneling it into the pockets of a handful of billionaires. By choosing to detox from Big Tech by using real alternatives we can limit their access to us, and collectively we can take our power back!