---
title: The Importance of Independent Technology in Civil Society
date: 2025-07-06
summary: Independent technology is essential for civil society to thrive in the digital age. This essay explores the problems of centralization, the benefits of digital self-determination, and how we can build a more equitable and resilient digital future.
---

## Introduction

Independent technology—software and hardware developed outside corporate and government control, owned and operated by the people who use it—is essential to the flourishing of civil society in the digital age. As our social, political, and economic lives increasingly move online, the question of who controls these digital spaces has profound implications for democracy, individual autonomy, and collective well-being.

The Civil Society Technology Foundation (CSTF) contends that truly independent technology is not just preferable but necessary for addressing the growing crises of digital rights, privacy, autonomy, and democratic participation. When technology serves its users rather than distant shareholders or state interests, it becomes a foundation for a more equitable, free, and resilient society.

The concentration of digital power in the hands of a few corporations and governments has reached a critical threshold where it now threatens the very foundations of civil society. This essay examines why independent technology matters, what's at stake, and how we can build toward digital self-determination.

## The Problem: Centralization of Digital Power

Our digital infrastructure—from communication platforms to cloud computing services, from operating systems to artificial intelligence models—has become increasingly centralized under the control of a handful of global corporations and powerful states. This concentration creates systemic vulnerabilities and power imbalances that undermine individual autonomy and collective agency.

### Corporate Capture

The corporate capture of our digital commons has proceeded rapidly, with alarming consequences:

- **Infrastructure Consolidation**: Major technology companies have consolidated control over fundamental digital infrastructure, from cloud services to communication platforms. Just five companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft—now control much of the infrastructure that powers our digital lives, creating unprecedented concentrations of power.

- **Misaligned Incentives**: Commercial imperatives prioritize engagement, data collection, and profit over user well-being. When a service is "free," users become the product, with their attention and personal data monetized through surveillance-based advertising. As one tech executive famously noted, "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."

- **Extractive Relationships**: Platform monopolies create harmful dependencies and extract value from communities. Local businesses, independent creators, and civil society organizations increasingly rely on centralized platforms that extract fees, impose arbitrary rules, and can unilaterally change terms of service.

- **Artificial Scarcity**: Corporate technology creates artificial scarcity in what should be abundant digital resources. Digital goods can be replicated at near-zero marginal cost, yet subscription models, paywalls, and intellectual property regimes create artificial barriers to access and use.

- **Personalization as Control**: Algorithmic "personalization" becomes a mechanism for behavioral manipulation and preference shaping, optimizing for commercial outcomes rather than user agency or collective well-being. These systems are designed to maximize time spent, interaction, and consumption—not to enhance human flourishing.

Our public messaging infrastructure should not be in the hands of any individual, such as Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, where a single person's whims can reshape the digital public sphere that billions of people rely on.

### Government Overreach

As digital systems become central to civic life, governments have expanded their control in problematic ways:

- **Mass Surveillance**: State surveillance undermines civil liberties and democratic processes. The capabilities revealed by Edward Snowden and subsequent whistleblowers demonstrate how digital infrastructure has enabled unprecedented monitoring of citizens, activists, and journalists without appropriate democratic oversight.

- **Regulatory Capture**: Government regulation of technology often reinforces corporate power rather than constraining it. Complex regulatory frameworks crafted with industry input frequently protect incumbents while raising barriers to entry for smaller, independent alternatives.

- **Dependency Relationships**: Public services increasingly rely on proprietary technologies, creating long-term vulnerabilities. When governments outsource core functions to proprietary platforms, they sacrifice sovereignty and create risky dependencies that undermine democratic accountability.

- **Security State Expansion**: National security justifications often mask anti-democratic control mechanisms. The post-9/11 expansion of digital surveillance and the ongoing use of security arguments to justify technological control demonstrate how nominal protection can lead to substantial harm.

- **Corporate-State Alliances**: The line between corporate and state power blurs as they develop symbiotic relationships. Tech companies gain market access and regulatory advantages, while states gain access to data and infrastructure for surveillance and control.

Government is too often compromised by corporate special interests, creating a cycle where those with the most resources shape both market and regulatory outcomes.

### Systemic Failures

These problems aren't just individual failures but represent systemic issues with how digital technology is currently structured:

- **Inequality Amplification**: Concentration of technological power amplifies existing social inequalities. Those with fewer resources have less privacy, less control, and are more vulnerable to exploitation in digital systems designed primarily for profit maximization.

- **Manipulation Incentives**: Ad-based business models incentivize psychological manipulation rather than service. The imperative to maximize "engagement" leads to the amplification of divisive, emotional content and the creation of addictive design patterns.

- **Innovation Barriers**: Proprietary systems create artificial barriers to innovation and adaptation. When core technologies are locked behind patents, trade secrets, and closed interfaces, communities cannot adapt them to their specific needs or improve upon them.

- **Infrastructure Vulnerabilities**: Critical infrastructure becomes vulnerable to both market and geopolitical forces. When essential digital services are controlled by profit-seeking entities or potentially hostile governments, they become points of leverage that can be exploited during conflicts or crises.

- **Externalized Harms**: The costs of digital systems are often externalized onto users and society, from privacy violations to psychological harms to environmental impacts. These are treated as "external" to the core transaction, though they represent real and significant costs.

The structure of our digital infrastructure has evolved rapidly, without sufficient consideration of its impacts on civil society, democracy, and human flourishing. The consequence is a digital ecosystem that systematically extracts value from communities while undermining the conditions for collective agency.

## The Solution: Digital Self-Determination

In response to these challenges, we need a vision of digital self-determination—where individuals and communities can meaningfully control their technological destinies. This isn't merely a technical project but a social and political one, grounded in core principles that put human flourishing at the center of technological development.

### Core Principles of Independent Technology

Independent technology is guided by principles that prioritize human agency and community well-being:

- **User Sovereignty**: Control over personal data and computing environments must rest with users. People should own their data, determine how it's used, and maintain authority over the devices and services they rely on. Consent should be meaningful, informed, and revocable.

- **Open Systems**: Technology should be transparent, modifiable, and freely available. Open-source software, open standards, and open hardware create the conditions for inspection, improvement, and adaptation by communities rather than just original creators.

- **Decentralization**: Power and control should be distributed across networks of users rather than concentrated in a few hands. Federated and peer-to-peer systems demonstrate that we can have robust digital services without central points of control that become vectors for surveillance or censorship.

- **Practical Autonomy**: Users must be able to understand, modify, and maintain their own tools. This requires both accessible technology and educational resources that build capacity for technical self-determination. Autonomy without capability is merely theoretical.

- **Democratic Governance**: The rules, policies, and development priorities of digital systems should be determined through democratic processes. Those affected by technological systems should have a voice in how they function and evolve.

### Benefits to Civil Society

Independent technology creates substantial benefits for civil society organizations and the communities they serve:

- **Enhanced Privacy and Security**: Vulnerable communities and organizations gain protection from surveillance and data exploitation. Organizations working on sensitive issues like human rights, public health, or political reform can operate with greater safety and confidence.

- **Resilience Against Control**: Independent systems provide resilience against censorship, platform bans, and arbitrary rule changes. When an organization runs its own infrastructure, it cannot be easily silenced through the decision of a commercial platform.

- **Local Adaptation**: Communities can adapt technology to their specific needs, languages, and cultural contexts. Rather than accepting one-size-fits-all solutions designed for maximum market share, they can modify systems to reflect their own priorities and circumstances.

- **Cost Reduction**: Over time, organizations reduce financial dependencies and costs associated with proprietary solutions. Though initial investment may be higher, the elimination of recurring licensing fees and the ability to maintain and extend systems independently creates long-term sustainability.

- **Value Alignment**: Technology can be aligned with democratic values and human rights principles rather than profit maximization. When the primary goal is service to community rather than return on investment, different design choices emerge.

- **Cooperative Scale**: Collaboration between organizations multiplies capabilities without centralizing control. Federated approaches allow for interoperability and shared resources while preserving autonomy for each participating entity.

Most importantly, independent technology simply works better for the specific needs of civil society. The quality can be higher because it's designed for use rather than for market dominance or data extraction.

## The Path Forward: Building Digital Commons

Building viable alternatives to corporate-controlled technology requires both technical and social infrastructure. We need robust, accessible tools and the organizational structures to sustain them.

### Technical Foundations

The technical foundations of digital commons include:

- **Self-Hosted Infrastructure**: Individuals and organizations need infrastructure they can directly control. From personal servers to community-scale hosting, self-hosting creates the foundation for genuine autonomy and reduces dependencies on corporate services.

- **Open-Source Software**: Software that can be freely used, modified, and shared provides the basis for adaptation and improvement. The vast ecosystem of open-source tools demonstrates that collaborative, non-proprietary development produces robust, high-quality solutions.

- **Federation Protocols**: Communication standards that enable interaction without central control allow communities to connect while maintaining their autonomy. Email, the original federated protocol, demonstrates how diverse systems can interoperate without a single controlling entity.

- **Efficient Design**: Tools must be designed for accessibility and efficiency, not requiring corporate-scale resources. Software that runs well on modest hardware and with limited bandwidth ensures that technological self-determination isn't limited to those with significant resources.

- **Data Portability**: Users should be able to move their data between different services and systems. Open formats and export capabilities ensure that people aren't locked into particular tools or platforms because of their historical data.

These technical elements aren't merely features but fundamental design principles that shape what technology can and cannot do, who it serves, and how power flows within digital systems.

### Social Foundations

Technical infrastructure alone is insufficient; we also need social structures to support and sustain independent technology:

- **Community Ownership**: Digital infrastructure should be governed by the communities it serves. Cooperative ownership models, community trusts, and other collective governance approaches provide alternatives to both corporate control and state centralization.

- **Technical Literacy**: Building capacity for understanding and maintaining technology is essential. Educational resources, mentorship programs, and accessible documentation help more people participate meaningfully in digital self-determination.

- **Collaborative Development**: Cooperative development models distribute both the work and the benefits of creating and maintaining digital commons. From formal cooperatives to informal contributor communities, collaborative approaches make sustainable independent technology possible.

- **Public Investment**: Digital commons require public support commensurate with their social value. Just as we fund libraries, parks, and other public goods, we should invest in digital infrastructure that serves the common good rather than private interests.

- **Network Solidarity**: Communities of practice must support each other across different contexts and applications. By sharing resources, knowledge, and political solidarity, independent technology initiatives can resist the pressure to centralize or commercialize.

The social dimension of independent technology is not secondary but fundamental to its success. Technical solutions divorced from community governance and capacity building will inevitably drift toward centralization and exploitation.

## Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Inflection Point

The rapid development of artificial intelligence represents both a profound challenge and a potential opportunity for digital self-determination. How AI evolves in the coming years will shape the balance of power in digital spaces for decades to come.

### The Challenge

AI development currently reinforces centralization and inequality:

- **Concentration of Control**: Unprecedented concentration of AI capabilities in a few corporations and states creates new power imbalances. The resources required to train frontier models have limited development to a handful of well-funded entities, primarily in the US and China.

- **Resource Barriers**: Massive computational and data requirements create barriers to independent development. Training large language models requires infrastructure investments beyond the reach of most communities, universities, or even mid-sized companies.

- **Governance Deficits**: Rapid deployment has proceeded without adequate governance or oversight. Models with significant capabilities and potential risks are being deployed into society with minimal democratic input or regulatory frameworks.

- **Inequality Amplification**: Without intervention, AI is likely to amplify existing power imbalances. Those who control AI systems gain unprecedented capabilities to automate tasks, analyze data, and influence social processes, while those without access fall further behind.

- **Colonization of Knowledge**: AI models trained on human cultural production without consent or compensation represent a new form of appropriation. The ingestion of text, images, code, and other cultural artifacts into proprietary models effectively privatizes collective knowledge.

These trends threaten to create a new era of technological dependency more profound than any we've seen before, where a few entities control the fundamental tools of knowledge work, cultural production, and computational reasoning.

### The Opportunity

Despite these challenges, AI also presents significant opportunities for digital self-determination:

- **Efficiency Innovations**: Open, efficient AI models that can run on commodity hardware are becoming increasingly viable. Models designed for local deployment rather than API access can provide sophisticated capabilities without centralized control.

- **Community Governance**: AI development aligned with public interest values can prioritize different outcomes. Community-governed projects demonstrate alternatives to both corporate and state-controlled AI, emphasizing transparency, safety, and broad access.

- **Capability Democratization**: AI can expand human capability and agency when designed for augmentation rather than replacement. Tools that enhance creativity, learning, and problem-solving can strengthen rather than undermine human autonomy.

- **Resource Redistribution**: Democratized access to computational power can rebalance digital inequalities. Cooperative computing initiatives, public infrastructure, and efficient algorithms can make advanced capabilities available to a much wider range of communities.

- **Knowledge Commons**: Open models trained on consensually shared data can create a genuine knowledge commons. Public investment in models explicitly designed as digital public goods can ensure that AI capabilities become a shared resource rather than a proprietary advantage.

The path we choose with AI—toward further centralization or toward democratization—will significantly shape the future of digital self-determination. By supporting open, efficient, and community-governed approaches to AI, we can ensure that these powerful tools enhance rather than undermine human agency and collective well-being.

## Case Study: Wild Cloud

The Civil Society Technology Foundation's Wild Cloud project exemplifies the principles of independent technology in practice. This reference implementation demonstrates how civil society organizations can regain digital sovereignty through practical, accessible tools.

Wild Cloud provides:

- **Self-Hosted Services**: Organizations can run their own email, calendar, file storage, website, and collaboration tools on infrastructure they control, reducing dependency on corporate platforms.

- **Privacy by Design**: All services prioritize data minimization, encryption, and user control, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected from surveillance and exploitation.

- **Simplified Deployment**: Despite the complexity of the underlying systems, simplified deployment tools make it feasible for organizations with limited technical capacity to set up and maintain their own infrastructure.

- **Community Support**: A network of practitioners provides documentation, troubleshooting assistance, and ongoing development, ensuring that organizations aren't alone in their journey toward digital self-determination.

- **Federation**: All services support open standards and federation protocols, allowing organizations to communicate with others while maintaining their autonomy and control.

This practical approach to digital sovereignty demonstrates that independence from corporate platforms is not merely theoretical but achievable with current technology and modest resources. By making these tools more accessible and providing support for their adoption, we create pathways to broader digital self-determination.

## Conclusion: A Call to Action

The choice is not between technology and its absence, but between technology that serves its users and technology that serves other masters. Civil society requires digital tools that enhance rather than undermine its core values of autonomy, cooperation, and democratic governance.

Independent technology is not a luxury or a theoretical preference—it is a practical necessity for maintaining the conditions that make civil society possible. When our digital infrastructure is captured by commercial or state interests, the spaces for independent association, expression, and collective action narrow dangerously.

By investing in independent technology, we create the possibility of digital spaces that reflect and reinforce the values of civil society rather than market or state power. This is not merely a technical challenge but a social and political imperative that requires both visionary thinking and practical action.

The path forward requires:

1. **Individual Action**: Moving personal and organizational data to self-hosted or community-governed platforms
2. **Collective Investment**: Supporting the development and maintenance of digital commons through funding, contribution, and advocacy
3. **Policy Reform**: Advancing regulatory frameworks that limit surveillance, protect privacy, and ensure interoperability
4. **Educational Initiatives**: Building technical literacy and capacity for digital self-determination
5. **Alternative Models**: Developing and demonstrating viable alternatives to the current dominant paradigms

An open Internet is a human right. Our digital commons—the shared spaces, tools, and resources that enable connection, creation, and collective action—must be protected from capture and enclosure, whether by corporate monopolies or authoritarian states.

The Civil Society Technology Foundation invites individuals, organizations, and communities to join in building and maintaining the digital commons our shared future requires. By reclaiming control over our technological infrastructure, we take a crucial step toward a more just, democratic, and flourishing society.
