{"id":250721,"date":"2026-05-20T16:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/nearly-everything-we-use-online-is-owned-by-big-tech-theres-a-better-way-forward\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T16:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:20:08","slug":"nearly-everything-we-use-online-is-owned-by-big-tech-theres-a-better-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/nearly-everything-we-use-online-is-owned-by-big-tech-theres-a-better-way-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly everything we use online is owned by big tech. There\u2019s a better way forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly everything we use online is owned by big tech. There\u2019s a better way forward<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/theconversation.com\/nearly-everything-we-use-online-is-owned-by-big-tech-theres-a-better-way-forward-282969<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-20 16:05:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Globally, users of digital media are increasingly locked into a handful of operating systems, app stores, and communication platforms. Most of us must choose between Apple, Windows, or Android. All of these are owned by American tech giants. <\/p>\n

Much of private and government IT infrastructure \u2013 websites, mobile banking, nearly anything online you can think of \u2013 uses cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare or Microsoft Azure. They might have locations worldwide, but these are also US companies.<\/p>\n

Mobile phones, laptops, smartwatches and more are mostly made by American or Chinese companies. And it\u2019s getting worse as tech companies embed artificial intelligence (AI) assistants directly into everyday devices, such as Google\u2019s Gemini or Microsoft\u2019s Copilot. They\u2019re doing this in ways designed to further entrench users within particular ecosystems.<\/p>\n

When a single cyber security update brought down Windows computers the world over in 2024, it was a stark reminder nobody should put all their IT eggs in one basket. <\/p>\n

But what might that actually look like? The \u201cdigital sovereignty\u201d movement in the European Union (EU) can show us the way. European countries are gradually breaking up with American tech giants and pushing for local AI development, all in the name of achieving digital autonomy. <\/p>\n

What exactly is \u2018digital sovereignty\u2019?<\/h2>\n

A state\u2019s sovereignty means to be able to govern itself. Extend that to the digital era, and we arrive at a concept that\u2019s difficult to pin down, but broadly means being in charge of your own digital infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take the European digital sovereignty strategy. It provides a roadmap for creating, owning and governing computer hardware, AI, software, and social media within the EU. Any tech providers would have to comply with core EU values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal here is digital autonomy. It means…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly everything we use online is owned by big tech. There\u2019s a better way forward…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/736939\/original\/file-20260520-57-we2uvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C224%2C8192%2C4096&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-250721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250726,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250721\/revisions\/250726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}