Inside my Techxit

How I Divested Myself of the Broligarchy and Boycotted Trump Donors, Too

The mechanisms designed to head off a democratic collapse in the U.S. have all failed. As Garry Kasparov said, “This doesn’t end with fights over top-secret documents, budget cuts and unaccountable agents taking over. It ends with who has the guns when they won’t listen to the judges.” 

I’ve been expecting something like this since 2019, when I left the U.S. for Sweden with my family. In a sense, because of this, you could say that I have already responded. But I haven’t washed my hands of the U.S., even though it’s broken my heart into a thousand pieces. I never will, because it’s home. 

The old America is gone, though. As Carole Cadwalladr wrote in IT IS A COUP, what we are now seeing is the merger of Silicon Valley with state power: “This was an organised, systematic, jailbreak on one of the United States’ most precious and sensitive resources: the private data of its citizens.” 

The tech firms are thigh-high in all kinds of frightening projects, documented in part by the Tech Transparency Project. They think that at this point, we can’t live without them. I’d like to prove them wrong. We are losing power as citizens by the minute, but we haven’t lost power as consumers. Trump supporters have lots of flags and gold sneakers, yes, but not much money. The Broligarchy needs us and that could be the secret to their undoing. I, for one, am happy to be deeply inconvenienced by fucking them over. 

I’m severely curtailing my use of tech. I don’t know that Jeff Bezos will weep because I cancelled my $139.00 Amazon Prime annual subscription. He’s still got 200 million other subscribers. But if this trend toward the rejection of tech widens and accelerates, then it could become a powerful force. Some of this is painful and a lot of it is inconvenient, but so be it. I am ready to suffer. And while I came to this decision independently, I notice that a lot of other people around me are doing the same. 

Along the same lines, I’m not buying anything – not a single thing – from any company or person that supports this administration. This means, among other things, no more Diet Coke or Uber or Airbnb for me. It will sting, but there are plenty of alternatives out there and I am not fucking around. In fact, I’m not buying much of anything these days, because it feels inappropriate all of a sudden. These are serious times.

Here’s what happened. I realized that I had a direct connection to each of the tech oligarchs up there on the podium on Inauguration Day. They had my credit card number and address. They had a grand total of eight microphones on 24/7 in my tiny Swedish house, with my consent. They had 20+ years of my family photos, all of my texts and emails, and knew exactly when, where and how much I spent every day. They knew my circle of friends, my interests, and almost everything I wrote and read, both online and via my Kindle. I wasn’t naive about the concept of digital privacy but I was also far more exposed than I had realized. I didn’t think of myself as a very tech-oriented person, but it had crept up on me and I was deeply uncomfortable. 

Back in the old days, I’d thought, “Who cares if Amazon knows I bought a jumbo box of diapers, a printer cartridge and some vacuum cleaner bags? So what?” Now I do care, because as the tech maxim goes, If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product. They know everything about us and that’s exactly what they’re selling. 

They may well know us better than we know ourselves. They have profiles of users’ routines and habits, detailed user location data, purchase history at brick-and-mortar retailers, keyword information about likes and dislikes derived from user conversations; browsing history on many third-party websites; information about how users interact with a web page, including what they linger on, and much more. 

I began to close as many points of connection to tech as I could. It all began a while back with media. I deactivated my Twitter account shortly after Elon Musk bought it. When he stopped verifying users and fired the content moderation chief, it was obvious that the site would become a cesspool and it did. I cancelled my Washington Post subscription after its shocking and craven abdication of duty in the run-up to the election. I nuked my New York Times account for the same reason, plus they truly seem to have lost their damn minds. I did keep my subscription to the NYT’s Games and Cooking sections, however, because they are necessary for my happiness. I replaced these news sources with the Guardian, the Atlantic and the New Yorker.

I cancelled Amazon Prime. They uncancelled my cancellation twice, the sleazy fuckers, but I persisted. I put my beloved Kindle in a drawer after many years of very heavy use. Now I’m reading ebooks from Bookshop.org on my laptop. I don’t love this format, so when Kobo can accept ebooks from Bookshop, as is planned, I’ll buy a Kobo eReader. I stopped using ApplePay, because Apple doesn’t need to know what I spend every day. Now, my spending is between me and my bank, which is fucking regulated. I moved my documents off Google Docs and put my longer-form work onto Reedsy Studio (free!) and Scrivener (not free). I swapped Google Chrome for DuckDuckGo, which was an easy transition. The search is far superior to Chrome and you can do it without being tracked by an army of creepy data miners. You can also get a secure email address. I love it. I’m also a big fan of Signal. 

I never had TikTok or Instagram, so there was no issue there. But deactivating my Facebook account after 17 years was difficult, even though I hated the ads and all the free-floating negativity. I gave a week’s notice to my friends and swapped contact info with those who followed up. Some wrote me long, delicious emails with their news. Others seemed pissed off at me for the inconvenience. In any event, it was definitely a hard habit to break. For more than a month, my hands would bypass my brain and try to access Facebook. The itch was upon me, bucking and thrashing! It took a while for it to die but eventually, I stopped thinking about Facebook anymore. The only social media I use now is Substack Notes, which is civilized.

Here on the other side, life proceeds at a more human pace. It feels slower and more nurturing. I call people now, almost every day, just to chat. I have more time without all those dog videos and I’m spending more time outside. I didn’t give up my phone but it’s in my hand less. I can feel my attention span sharpening and my thinking is clearer. I am gathering strength.

If you’re looking to exert more power as a consumer, Progressive Shopper helps you put your money where your values are by showing how various retailers stack up on corporate values and issue positions. Other resources allow you to research who is doing what by issues. My favorites are money-in-politics via OpenSecrets and Fox News advertisers via Media Matters. Here are some others:

• Enablers of the gun industry via Guns Down America and Business Must Act

• Funds anti-abortion politicians via Equity Forward, Don’t Ban Equality, and Planned Parenthood

• Enablers of Donald Trump via #GrabYourWallet and Popular Information

• Pinkwashers of LGBT+ rights via All Out and Human Rights Campaign

• Funds private prisons via Real Money Moves

• Enables deforestation / fossil fuels via Rainforest Action Network

• Paid leave policies via PL+US and the National Partnership for Women & Families

• Overpaid CEOs via As You Sow

• Funds climate deniers via League of Conservation Voters and JUST Capital

• Enables Russian Invasion of Ukraine via Kyiv School of Economics (KSE)

• Doesn’t support Human Rights Defenders via Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

If you want to explore getting involved in this struggle, other good resources are MoveOn, Public Citizen, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Or visit Indivisible, which offers the excellent how-to, A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink: Strategies, Tactics, & Tips For How Everyday Americans Can Fight Back Together Wherever We Live.​​