“The illusion of digital democracy: Why social media can’t save us from technocratic control”
Navigating the paradox of social media in political activism, from amplifying voices to reinforcing elite control and data colonialism.
The context: On one hand, social media appears to be amplifying ordinary Palestinians’ voices in an oppressive regime, on the other, there is mass removal and shadowbanning of pro-Palestinian content. On one hand, social media facilitates the post-ironic mockery of elite excesses in Nepal, on the other, it continues to promote and embody elite influencer culture. This has created a need for revaluation of surrounding discourse.
Terminology
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- Clicktivism,
- Slacktivism,
- Virtue signalling,
- Echo chambers,
- Desensitization, and
- Commodification of suffering
- Big brother algorithm
- Disinformation
- Data colonialism
- Algorithmic democracy
To counter these, activists usually resort to self-policing.
Greta Thunberg acknowledges Instagram and Twitter (now X) in amplifying her first political stint as a schoolkid- Fridays For Future, but warns that only tangible action can fully materialize the goals of social change.
Tech is a privatised ecosystem
At its core, modern technology isn’t a democratic commons; it’s a privatised ecosystem built and sustained by a narrow cadre of individuals and corporations. Consider social media and artificial intelligence ecosystems: platforms like Facebook (Meta), Twitter (now X), Instagram, and TikTok are controlled by a handful of conglomerates.
OpenAI (creators of ChatGPT) started as a nonprofit but pivoted to a for-profit model backed by Microsoft, one of the world’s largest tech giants. These aren’t grassroots inventions; they’re engineered by data scientists and executives from elite institutions (Stanford, MIT, Ivy League pedigrees), funded by venture capital firms like Sequoia, concentrating wealth among a tiny investor class. As of 2025, the top five tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta) control over 25% of the S&P 500’s market cap, embodying what critics call the “techno-oligarchy”.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of world wide web famously laments the transformation of open web into “walled gardens curated by elites”.
Proponents of this view point to “data colonialism” where international organizations (IMF, World Bank, UN) deploy technocrats to shape developing nations’ policies under the guise of reform, aligning them with capitalist interests, muddying good governance. If we draw parallels with colonial-era policies, data is the new ‘raw material’, and data extracted locally fuels foreign innovation, often undercutting our sovereignty over our produce.
Data colonialism, and technocratic neo-imperialism interconnect with global contemporary.
Fair, open and free social media
To this dilemma, two solutions are given- one argues that we must decentralize social media from our conversations around progressive politics. We fetishize technology so much so that we exaggerate its role in social change. Real change emerges from grassroots activism.
The other, Calling for decentralized, crowdfunded platforms like Mastodon with open protocols, user-owned servers, and transparent, interoperable networks like blockchain to push power to the edges, can reduce centralization’s chokepoints and potentially enable “algorithmic democracy”.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Mastodon inventor/owner Eugen Rochko claims his platform is “not for sale”; it runs on crowdfunding where people bear the cost of setting up their own servers as opposed to centralized platforms like Twitter(X) where the data servers are funded and owned by Meta. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon can’t force compliance.
The path to true digital democracy lies in dismantling tech imperialism, not in rejecting tech-mediated advancement.
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