Real talk in the age of the corporate cyber-stalker. https://backlit.neocities.org Sun, 31 May 2026 16:35:00 +0100 20000 If Edward Snowden wasn't a real whistleblower, what was he there to achieve?... By the close of the groundbreaking article, you'll have what I think is a cast-iron, incontrovertible explanation for the Snowden saga. Get it here first... https://backlit.neocities.org/snowden.html https://backlit.neocities.org/snowden.html Sun, 31 May 2026 16:35:00 +0100 The mask was sure to drop off sooner or later. For over three years, Cory Doctorow has scraped through his marketing brief on a low-conversion diet. And it was fairly clear that under extreme pressure from his corporate sugardaddies, he was gonna show the "Actually, AI is really cool" card to the Resistance sooner or later. That moment has arrived. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, on the back of a content marketing beano for Google Premium, Doctorow has finally quit his "AI" doublespeak and chucked his cards onto the table... https://backlit.neocities.org/doctorow-admits-using-a-slop-machine-to-produce-his-propaganda.html https://backlit.neocities.org/doctorow-admits-using-a-slop-machine-to-produce-his-propaganda.html Sun, 22 Feb 2026 17:40:00 +0000 Expressly for the benefit of anyone who thinks that renting access to a Silicon Valley search engine is a good idea, here are some points to consider before parting with your hard-earned dosh in exchange for "Google in a flat cap"... https://backlit.neocities.org/using-google-premium-to-search-a-wasteland-is-the-definition-of-gullibility.html https://backlit.neocities.org/using-google-premium-to-search-a-wasteland-is-the-definition-of-gullibility.html Sun, 14 Dec 2025 16:15:00 +0000 The progressive enlazification of society has mapped out a corporatocratic playbook in which the public are ruled not by the fist or the gun - but by their own aversion to effort. Unfortunately, if you are too lazy to think, someone is going to do your thinking for you. And it is a hundred percent certain that the ultimate beneficiary of someone else's thinking will not be you... https://backlit.neocities.org/enlazification.html https://backlit.neocities.org/enlazification.html Sun, 23 Nov 2025 18:54:00 +0000 If you trace back the roots of the things for which Google ultimately became infamous, you'll notice a glaring conundrum. To coin a phrase, the cart came before the horse. There's a period in the early to mid 1990s, during which the fledgling tools of surveillance capitalism are being developed, but there is no visible use for them. So was surveillance capitalism a scripted timetable rather than a spontaneous happenstance? It's assumed that capitalism is the end and surveillance is the means. But is it, and was it always, the other way around? https://backlit.neocities.org/did-surveillance-capitalism-predate-the-www.html https://backlit.neocities.org/did-surveillance-capitalism-predate-the-www.html Sun, 28 Sep 2025 17:46:00 +0100 "AI assistants" are a licence to perpetrate unprecedented corporate evil. That's why the propaganda behind them is so wild. "AI"'s adoption drive is singularly the most sophisticated and ubiquitous combination of censorship and propoganda we've yet seen from the tech industry. Search engines have deliberately been miswired, censoring real voices to the point that only robots, their masters and their servants are allowed to provide information. This epic article sets the scene, then looks at our options for battle in the dirtiest of wars... https://backlit.neocities.org/how-to-meaningfully-oppose-ai.html https://backlit.neocities.org/how-to-meaningfully-oppose-ai.html Sun, 7 Sep 2025 16:50:00 +0000 Teaching the world DIY application-building techniques is a fundamental contradiction to the Big Tech agenda of creating and exploiting maximum public dependency. That's why, when Google invades schools and campuses, it fills them with spyware, rather than the meaningful programming tuition which should long since have been placed at the education system's core... https://backlit.neocities.org/the-code-conspiracy-why-we-can-t-build-software.html https://backlit.neocities.org/the-code-conspiracy-why-we-can-t-build-software.html Sun, 17 Aug 2025 18:56:00 +0000 If it's worth more broken than it's worth in a functional state, then inevitably, those with the power to do so will make sure it gets broken. But there's a special art to breaking the supposedly everlasting free and open source branch of webtech... https://backlit.neocities.org/capitalist-guide-to-killing-free-webtech.html https://backlit.neocities.org/capitalist-guide-to-killing-free-webtech.html Sun, 03 Aug 2025 18:17:00 +0000 Isn't a firewall meant to stop unauthorised entry?... Supposedly. So what, exactly, is it doing when your software providers gleefully shovel bucketloads of unwanted crap onto your system without asking and without challenge?... Let's see how the tech elite duped us into accepting pretend firewalls, and how we can use a real firewall to put an end to unauthorised software updates. https://backlit.neocities.org/how-to-block-forced-updates.html https://backlit.neocities.org/how-to-block-forced-updates.html Sun, 8 Jun 2025 15:48:00 +0100 A carefully orchestrated non-commercial Web could cause the tech industry giants an excruciating headache. But are small web publishers ready to start a revolution that exploits Big Brother's morbid fear: immutable technology?... https://backlit.neocities.org/weaponsing-the-non-commercial-web.html https://backlit.neocities.org/weaponsing-the-non-commercial-web.html Mon, 24 Mar 2025 06:07:00 +0000 Has Cory Doctorow's tireless "enshittification" campaign been the axle of a people's fightback, or just a two-faced diversion from his own starring role in destroying the World Wide Web?... https://backlit.neocities.org/doctorow-doom-what-to-say-to-the-public-when-you-ve-ruined-the-internet.html https://backlit.neocities.org/doctorow-doom-what-to-say-to-the-public-when-you-ve-ruined-the-internet.html Sun, 09 Feb 2025 18:25:00 +0000 As "ethical tech" squeezes the next generation of Surveillance Valley supervillainware into its media-endorsed offerings, observers scratch their heads. But it all makes total sense if you take into account a couple of straightforward facts... https://backlit.neocities.org/why-you-are-getting-a-chat-assistant-whether-you-like-it-or-not.html https://backlit.neocities.org/why-you-are-getting-a-chat-assistant-whether-you-like-it-or-not.html Thu, 14 Nov 2024 19:42:00 +0000 All browser providers claim to care about privacy. Most of them are straightforwardly lying. It's easy to kid a lay crowd. But once in a while, a browser raises applause among tech knowledgeables. The threesome in this privacy evaluation have won just such an ovation. But do they live up to the hype? https://backlit.neocities.org/browser-evaluation-mullvad-floorp-librewolf.html https://backlit.neocities.org/browser-evaluation-mullvad-floorp-librewolf.html Sun, 2 Jun 2024 19:08:00 +0100 If the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same behaviour with the expectation of different outcomes, we are all insane. And our insanity is about to cost us dear. Literally... https://backlit.neocities.org/rug-pull-culture-101.html https://backlit.neocities.org/rug-pull-culture-101.html Wed, 22 May 2024 20:15:00 +0100 What is propaganda-hacking? Why do we support people who don't support us? And do you ever get the sense that conspiracy theorists are just capitalists dressed as activists?... https://backlit.neocities.org/the-nonpartisan-guide-to-conspiracy-theory.html https://backlit.neocities.org/the-nonpartisan-guide-to-conspiracy-theory.html Sun, 5 May 2024 16:36:00 +0100 Capitalism's approach to finding talent is roughly like trying to select a romantic partner by touring the neighbourhood in a blindfold and earplugs, soliciting formally-declared sexual histories and then submitting a marriage proposal to the community member who has previously had the most sex. And then wondering why the relationship doesn't work. Let's take a dive into the detail of this insanity... https://backlit.neocities.org/the-delusionals.html https://backlit.neocities.org/the-delusionals.html Sun, 4 Feb 2024 16:15:00 +0000 As we sit in dismay amid the World Wide Web's Great Decline, our mindset is one of resignation. But history tells us that resignation has a threshold, and what comes next, is action. Government-rubberstamped corporate anarchy may seem impossible to fight today, but what happens when governments themselves begin to suffer the ill effects of monopoly?... https://backlit.neocities.org/averting-the-internets-great-decline.html https://backlit.neocities.org/averting-the-internets-great-decline.html Sun, 14 Jan 2024 18:43:00 +0000 We are deluding ourselves that Firefox is a competitor to Chrome, when it's really Google's weapon against competition itself. But how does this weaponry work, and why would Google be so keen to save Firefox's life?... https://backlit.neocities.org/firefox-an-illusion-of-choice.html https://backlit.neocities.org/firefox-an-illusion-of-choice.html Sun, 10 Dec 2023 15:45:00 +0000 If slavery persisted because the law failed to restrain inhuman greed, we must surely now be dangerously close to entering a renaissance. As a new wave of capitalists observe almost every line from the old-time people-trader's playbook, are we seeing a reincarnation of capitalism's shameful past?... https://backlit.neocities.org/corporate-anarchy-and-the-new-people-trade.html https://backlit.neocities.org/corporate-anarchy-and-the-new-people-trade.html Sun, 26 Nov 2023 18:15:00 +0000 There's a common belief that artificial intelligence took a giant leap in efficiency during 2022. All that really happened was that it turned into a search engine and repackaged the output to cut out the sources and the choice. But this stripping away of sources and choice has produced new, unprecedented potential for corruption and propaganda, alongside many other nightmare possibilities. Will the not-so-humble "chatbot" turn out to be the most powerful propaganda tool the tech industry has yet unleashed?... https://backlit.neocities.org/voice-of-god-the-truth-about-ai-assistants.html https://backlit.neocities.org/voice-of-god-the-truth-about-ai-assistants.html Sun, 5 Nov 2023 19:45:00 +0000 Surveillance capitalists have developed spectacularly efficient and sophisticated data-collection systems. They're doing the surveillance side of their job brilliantly. But the capitalism side of their job? That's sliding down the piste at uncontrollable speed, on its back, with its skis in the air. As Big Tech finds itself with more data than ever, and fast-decreasing opportunities to exploit it for ad revenue, we'll see a switch of focus to lucrative channels such as the intelligence market. Yep, Big Tech wants to sell your fingerprints to the police, and it's coming for them in ways you may not be able to refuse... https://backlit.neocities.org/save-the-password-or-lose-your-human-rights-forever.html https://backlit.neocities.org/save-the-password-or-lose-your-human-rights-forever.html Sun, 22 Oct 2023 14:15:00 +0000 It's an irony of our time that the excessive multi-factor authentication measures so aggressively pushed by Surveillance Valley, have proved more likely to lose you your account than protect it against hackers. But is being locked out of an online account just a side effect of multi-factor authentication, or the whole point of it?... https://backlit.neocities.org/the-great-lockout-online-account-eviction-as-a-business-model.html https://backlit.neocities.org/the-great-lockout-online-account-eviction-as-a-business-model.html Sun, 15 Oct 2023 15:40:00 +0000 We've recently entered the first ever period in which the progress of the World Wide Web is widely perceived to have dropped into retrograde. Websearch has been one of the most noticeable victims of this new, retrogressive age. But is paying for "premium search" the solution? In this post, we'll look at some of the fatal flaws in premium search, and discover why it's work, not money, that we need to throw into our fact-finding regime... https://backlit.neocities.org/why-the-subscription-model-is-not-the-solution-to-dysfunctional-websearch.html https://backlit.neocities.org/why-the-subscription-model-is-not-the-solution-to-dysfunctional-websearch.html Tue, 10 Oct 2023 18:35:00 +0000 The value of an account on an exploitative, ad-strewn Silicon Valley silo was established at $0, and it's always been considered expensive at that. There will soon come a point at which even the average Musk supporter will begin to notice that cattle don't pay to be farmed... https://backlit.neocities.org/overpriced-at-zero-why-the-former-twitter-cannot-survive https://backlit.neocities.org/overpriced-at-zero-why-the-former-twitter-cannot-survive Sun, 1 Oct 2023 11:40:00 +0000 Why does every new initiative that Silicon Valley companies introduce seem more like the work of a police department than the work of a commercial brand? Well, have you seen how much people are paying for intelligence data these days?... https://backlit.neocities.org/is-big-tech-running-a-secret-trade-in-intelligence-data https://backlit.neocities.org/is-big-tech-running-a-secret-trade-in-intelligence-data Sun, 3 Sep 2023 14:25:00 +0000 The amount of money that tech giants have spent capturing and co-opting the arena of Web-development is truly breathtaking. But where's the payback on that mind-boggling investment?… https://backlit.neocities.org/the-code-is-not-the-product-the-developer-is-the-product https://backlit.neocities.org/the-code-is-not-the-product-the-developer-is-the-product Mon, 27 Aug 2023 14:55:00 +0000 Unrestrained by web standards arbiters, cybertech giants use over-complexity as a weapon, creating lock-ins for consumers, barriers to entry for all but the very richest competitors, and a global data checkpoint around which no one can realistically build a bypass. And the brainwashing has been strong. Most of us consider it totally normal when cyber giants turn the things we wrote, into things we can't even read... https://backlit.neocities.org/the-weaponisation-of-web-standards.html https://backlit.neocities.org/the-weaponisation-of-web-standards.html Mon, 6 Feb 2023 18:00:00 +0000 IndieWebCamp was not about "owning your data". It was about sharing your Facebook content with Google - at your own expense. Here's a deep historical dig into the movement, its founders, its funders, and its impeccably-timed appearance, coinciding perfectly with the launch of Google Plus... https://backlit.neocities.org/posse-indieweb-big-tech-bullshit.html https://backlit.neocities.org/posse-indieweb-big-tech-bullshit.html Thu, 26 Jan 2023 18:40:00 +0000 Frictionless query and response (a la ChatGPT) appears to almost guarantee the demise of Google Search in its current form. So why is Google refusing to integrate an advanced chatbot system into its flagship product?... https://backlit.neocities.org/the-true-reason-why-google-will-not-integrate-chatgpt.html https://backlit.neocities.org/the-true-reason-why-google-will-not-integrate-chatgpt.html Tue, 17 Jan 2023 19:05:00 +0000 Once upon a time, long before anyone considered Google to be evil, Google devised an evil plan. A plan that sought to establish a fantastically biased search ranking tweak that would slowly lock small publishers out of the visible search results, whilst preferencing massive, Silicon Valley silos. Here's how the scheme worked, and how it eventually backfired... https://backlit.neocities.org/hyperlink-poison.html https://backlit.neocities.org/hyperlink-poison.html Sun, 8 Jan 2023 16:25:00 +0100 Many people cite companies like Google as "leftists", but they're as right wing as it gets. Raving capitalists, deeply elitist, tax-dodgers, anti-union... And if they're not exploiting the working class or telling them to work for free, they're putting them out of business altogether... They passionately HATE the modern day hippie culture that prevails in the Fediverse. They don't want to "join in" with that culture. They want to destroy it. But the route to the latter is via the former, so... https://backlit.neocities.org/googleplustodon.html https://backlit.neocities.org/googleplustodon.html Thu, 5 Jan 2023 23:10:00 +0100 Privacy died because journalism died. But could a new era of "DIY journalism" disarm the forces of propaganda that allowed cybertech to "grind down our privacy expectations"?... https://backlit.neocities.org/will-diy-journalism-save-our-privacy-rights.html https://backlit.neocities.org/will-diy-journalism-save-our-privacy-rights.html Sun, 1 Jan 2023 23:10:00 +0100 We've gone past "First they ignore you...", and moved onto the next logical step in the game of tech monopoly: "...Then they embrace, extend and extinguish you." Yes, it's game on, as the Surveillance Valley cartel maps out its Mastodon invasion timetable. But will the Fediverse resist, or will it fail to realise what's going on until it's too late? https://backlit.neocities.org/silicon-valley-to-invade-mastodon.html https://backlit.neocities.org/silicon-valley-to-invade-mastodon.html Sat, 24 Dec 2022 19:00:00 +0100 Back in June, Brave Software CEO Brendan Eich took to Twitter to theatrically trash rival search brand DuckDuckGo, who were still reeling from two rounds of embarrassing media stories. As the argument blew up, Eich twice used the phrase "privacy nihilism". And it turns out that this is something he and other 'privacy tech' CEOs morbidly fear. Our increasing resignation to surveillance culture is an existential threat to businesses who trade on privacy... https://backlit.neocities.org/privacy-nihilism.html https://backlit.neocities.org/privacy-nihilism.html Sun, 21 Aug 2022 19:00:00 +0100 Have you ever given Tor browser a reality check and thought... "Nah. Doesn't add up". I mean, here is a tool that supposedly protects the anonymity of its users, happily existing in a world where surveillance oligarchs will censor and/or block anything that cuts off their gravy train. Doesn't make sense to you? Nope, it didn't to me either. I dug deep into the hidden depths of Tot, and here is what I found... https://backlit.neocities.org/before-you-use-tor.html https://backlit.neocities.org/before-you-use-tor.html Sun, 07 Aug 2022 19:00:00 +0100 Back in 2016, when Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) [PDF] was first communicated to businesses, a warning shot echoed across the realm of online tracking. The forthcoming law came with a proposition of breathtaking fines, and it declared that tracking cookies could no longer be used as a default part of the open Web. Since then, surveillance capitalists have sought to build a much more resilient means of tracking Web users, but it could mean chaos for website admins... https://backlit.neocities.org/the-cdn-trap.html https://backlit.neocities.org/the-cdn-trap.html Sun, 31 Jul 2022 19:00:00 +0100 Imagine, if you will, an online world in which there is no such thing as Google. No Amazon, no Facebook... No such thing as a cookie. No such thing, indeed, as a tracker... Sounding good? Then rejoice, dear reader. For this is not imaginary. This is a real place... https://backlit.neocities.org/is-geminispace-the-great-escape-from-1984.html https://backlit.neocities.org/is-geminispace-the-great-escape-from-1984.html Wed, 20 Jul 2022 19:00:00 +0100 If you've never before published content on a Creative Commons licence, have you ever wondered what happens when you do? If so, I have a cautionary tale coming up at the end of this post. But before we get there, I want to pull up the floorboards and explore the reality of Creative Commons. Who's behind it, who does it really help, does it make creators more successful, and is it good for creators in a legal sense?... https://backlit.neocities.org/creative-commons.html https://backlit.neocities.org/creative-commons.html Sun, 10 Jul 2022 19:00:00 +0100