Yet more than 5 billion people around the world have voluntarily outsourced aspects of these rights to corporate-owned social media platforms, Google’s search engine, and AI chat tools, handing that power to applications that facilitate and mediate their social networks and their relationship to information. It is well established that the mainstream social media technologies that focus on social networking and information sharing employ opaque algorithms to shape what people see and share. Stepping away from the dominant communications platforms does not necessarily mean rejecting modern information technologies, and it doesn’t mean revalidating the mass media that functioned as information gatekeepers and cultural and political influencers in the 20th century.