In the Big Tech cesspit

https://pplware.sapo.pt/google/google-critica-o-plano-da-europa-para-adotar-software-livre/ Google pushes the usual misleading line that plays on fears: that not using US big tech products will be a competitive disadvantage for Europe. And then slips in their request to not be regulated... typical big tech move - don't fall for it. As a monopoly they are the ones who strangle competition and innovation!

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/metas-zuckerberg-faces-questioning-youth-addiction-trial-2026-02-18/ Zuckerberg lies through his teeth in the dock - about Instagram deliberately addicting young kids. FYI: Snap and TikTok settled before the trial.
Related:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meta-trial-mark-zuckerberg-ai-glasses/ Meta's whole team were wearing Meta RayBan surveillance glasses in the courtroom 🤦‍♂️. The judge ordered them to remove them. And the glasses are revealed to be even creepier than you thought.

https://www.404media.co/metas-ai-patent-to-simulate-dead-people-shows-the-dangers-of-spectral-labor/ Meta have a patent to resurrect dead users using AI 🧟. As if they haven't data mined people enough when they're alive... this new practice is called 'Spectral Labour'. Brings new meaning to the term 'Death Tech'.

Death Tech and facial wreck

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/27/defense-anthropic-ai-war-risks-hegseth-amodei.html This Anthropic news is a fake AI fight to look ethical - don't be fooled: all the Big Tech companies love government weapons contracts (spoiler alert - OpenAI took the deal).

https://realmedia.press/the-watching-state/ The UK expands the surveillance state. Read this in the context of the gov trying to move towards a digital ID, and age gating online.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/rings-lost-dog-super-bowl-commercial-sparks-mass-surveillance-fears Amazon Ring Super-Bowl ad - dystopian neighbourhood surveillance. 'Search Party' is on by default.

https://observer.co.uk/culture/interviews/article/shoshana-zuboff-wants-to-abolish-social-media Shoshana Zuboff calls for social media to be abolished, after her new film, Molly vs The Machines, exposes its dark side. Click here for our review of this excellent documentary, and watch it here on Channel4.com. It is mandatory viewing if you have teenage children.

https://cybernews.com/security/poland-china-smart-cars-cameras-ban/ New cars are surveillance tools, full of tech that 'phones home'. This article shows the Polish military are taking no chances. Neither should you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html Meta plan to add facial recognition to their creepy RayBan AR glasses. They shut down previous facial recognition efforts after a $7B fine in 2021 (more detail) but now seem emboldened again. And what could go wrong as it is revealed that Meta employees see everything that is recorded?

Palantir

We continue to monitor this horrific US spytech firm...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-halt-uk-palantir-contracts-grow-amid-lack-of-transparency-over-deals There are now calls to halt Palantir contracts in UK. Good!

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/24/its-not-robocop-uk-police-embrace-ai-efficiency-in-complex-investigations? Info on how Palantir is used by UK police. It sounds good, but there's no way they won't use all the UK data for their own surveillance and control purposes.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/palantir-ai-gaza-humanitarian-aid-cmcc-srs-ngos-banned-israel Palantir AI used to track aid delivery in Gaza, bypassing existing UN function for this - replaced with for-profit contracts (privatising it).

Paedotech

https://bylinetimes.com/2026/02/17/big-tech-helped-elon-musk-meet-jeffrey-epstein-four-times-after-conviction/ Big Tech were tight with Epstein... despite protesting otherwise. See our previous Big Tech Rage Bait post for details on Big Tech's 'pivot to paedo'. Please... do not feed your kids to these monsters.

Age verification and Digital ID

https://cybernews.com/privacy/persona-leak-exposes-global-surveillance-capabilities Age verification is exposed as the massive data grab and control mechanism that it is. Is this Cambridge Analytica 2.0 - harbinger of the tipping point into a full surveillance state?

https://cybernews.com/security/global-data-leak-exposes-billion-records/ massive data leak discovered: 1bn digital ID records in a structured database. We've been warning that the companies trusted with digital ID/age verification records are not regulated, and regularly get hacked. For example, (second massive leak in one month!):

https://gizmodo.com/likely-the-largest-breach-in-u-s-history-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-conduent-fiasco-2000725930 A massive data leak from an age verification company. How many will it take?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyx0xggepjo Despite the risk of hacking, the UK gov fines Reddit for not putting age checks in place.

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051 only in Colorado, USA, but this bill would embed age gating at computer OS level 😬 The surveillance state grows...

Big Tech vs democracy

https://thecradle.co/articles-id/35816 Washington labels Albanese a terrorist and sanctions her. Not sure how to describe how overtly fucked up that is... read it and make your own mind up.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-no-platform-gets-a-free-pass-government-takes-action-to-keep-children-safe-online The UK announces plans to widen surveillance by age gating more internet areas, including VPNs. Related: https://mullvad.net/en/and-then/uk Mullvad makes ads warning of the UK gov slide to mass surveillance, but the ads are banned 🤦🏼‍♂️

https://alimcforever.substack.com/p/stop-looking-at-the-gdp-how-irelands how big tech has twisted an entire country's economy (Ireland)

Big tech is picking apart European democracy, but there is a solution: switch off its algorithms | Johnny Ryan | The Guardian Johnny Ryan continues to pinpoint the real problems - unregulated big tech firms' algorithms, and the influence of the US gov.

In the AI bubble

https://www.pcmag.com/news/im-seeing-ads-in-chatgpt-openai-broke-its-promise-what-they-look-like ChatGPT begins its process of enshittification by including ads. We have explained our site, here, and here, the problems with the targeted ad model.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/clawdbot-moltbot-openclaw-security-nightmare/ OpenClaw has gone viral but is suffering from security flaws. It can be useful, and more ethical when used with local models, though it has problems that people are still struggling to understand, including the the head of AI alignment at Meta: https://www.404media.co/meta-director-of-ai-safety-allows-ai-agent-to-accidentally-delete-her-inbox/

https://www.psgconsulting.com/research-publications/potential-risks-of-ideological-skewing academic study reveals how bias enters AI models at the training stage, both accidentally and on purpose. Data (asymmetric web crawling - right allows, left bans), human and structural biases, and regulatory lag all contribute.

Two AI propaganda articles went viral (via a credulous media) but Ed Zitron tears them down in these annotated versions: Something Big Is Coming and The Global Intelligence Crisis Please read these instead of the originals, it's much more entertaining! These articles are only there to pump AI share prices and are timed exactly with those companies trying to close an investment round.

https://gizmodo.com/ai-added-basically-zero-to-us-economic-growth-last-year-goldman-sachs-says-2000725380 AI added zero to the US economy in 2025, according to Goldman Sachs. Despite all the hype, e.g. those two articles linked above.

https://growtika.com/blog/tech-media-collapse AI summaries are killing online media sites by starving them of traffic. This has been suspected for a while but this article shows it. We are sure that is on purpose, and goes a long way to prove that the intensity of the AI push from big tech is motivated by a desire to control what information people see.

It's not all bad!

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2026/02/14/a-small-german-states-quiet-revolt-against-microsoft-and-what-it-means-for-europe/ A German county ditches Microsoft 365 in favour of an ethical alternative 🥳

Europeans are dangerously reliant on US tech. Now is a good time to build our own | Johnny Ryan | The Guardian Johnny Ryan shows that if Europe wants to, it can break free from US big tech, and shows us some examples of this working already 🥳

https://cybernews.com/privacy/tech-firms-ordered-to-remove-intimate-images-within-48-hours/ finally UK law is aimed at tech companies rather than individuals: tech firms have to remove non-consensual nude images within 48 hrs, when those images are flagged by the victim 🥳

https://peoplevsbig.tech/press-release-eu-polling/ A survey in the EU found that a large majority of those polled think the EU should 'take further action' against X if it continues to break the law (about the deepfake and CSAM images). 🥳 Now if only they would enforce the GDPR so clearly on social media....

Summary

This month's Mosh Pit helps you focus your rage on big tech's anti-competitive practices, surveillance expansion, and threat to democracy. We help you not be angry about it every day - just once a month on an epic scale!

Regulatory evasion and monopoly power were on strong display in February. Google misleads about competitive disadvantages while resisting regulation, while Meta faces addiction lawsuits over Instagram's deliberate design targeting youth. Meta's broader creepiness escalates: employees wore surveillance glasses in court, the company patented AI to resurrect dead users ("spectral labour"), and plans facial recognition for RayBan glasses despite a previous $7 billion fine.

Surveillance infrastructure expands globally. Age verification systems are exposed as massive data-harvesting mechanisms, with billion-record breaches from companies handling digital IDs. The UK expands surveillance through digital ID and VPN monitoring, while Amazon's Ring promotes neighbourhood surveillance. Palantir's spytech is embedded in UK policing and Gaza aid tracking, privatising public functions.

Democratic interference accelerates. Big tech algorithms shape European policy; the US government labels critics terrorists; and VPN warning ads are banned. Meanwhile, AI enshittification begins—ChatGPT adds ads, AI contributed zero to US economic growth in 2025, and AI summaries are deliberately starving media sites of traffic, concentrating information control.

The One-liners (for those who can't even handle summaries)

Big Tech has turned the entire planet into a surveillance dystopia, monetised human addiction and death itself, and now they're gaslighting us about it while their AI parasites drain the internet dry.

But wait, there's hope: Germany's ditching Microsoft, Europe's waking up to break free from US tech chains, the UK's finally holding platforms accountable, and the EU's ready to swing the hammer if Big Tech keeps pushing their luck.

Tech tip of the month

YouTube is owned by Google so they track and profile you mercilessly. Avoid that by opening YouTube links in the DuckDuckGo browser. It opens them in its 'Duck Player' and this strips out the tracking! Install the browser on your phone and desktop and you can just have it there for that purpose, whilst continuing to use your main browser for regular websites.

Bonus tip: the DDG browser has other tricks. Enable the setting for App Tracking Protection (Android only) and it will block most trackers contained within apps on your phone (there is an OS-native settings for that in iOS). The DDG browser also automatically handles cookie popups for you, and blocks ads, so it's great to set as your default browser - for those random sites you visit. If the browser struggles to open the site, that's your red flag that it's dodgy.

Check out our site for other Big Tech alternatives: https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/stopusingbigtech.html

Book recommendation

Following on from last month's recommendation of The Circle, this month we recommend you read the follow up to that: The Every. In my opinion it is even better as it depicts a mega corporation that is a merge of Google and Amazon, and shows what that would look like. Given that it was written in 2021, you can enjoy reading it while comparing to what has actually happened since then.

Blog recommendation

This month we recommend the excellent, and independent, tech blog 404 Media. It is built on Ghost, which is the same platform that our blog uses (what you're reading now). They dig into the background of what Big Tech are doing, and can be trusted due to their business model: reader funded.

Film recommendation

A must see for parents, Molly vs The Machines is an amazing new documentary that explains (in a brilliant visual way) how Big Tech social media really works. It was co-written by Shoshana Zuboff and Marc Silver. Use the chat box on their website to find out about the film and the surveillance economy in general (it uses an open source, local LLM). You'll recognise the name Shoshana Zuboff from the Learn pages on our website - her work is a huge influence on the Rebel Tech Alliance.

Molly vs The Machines is showing now on Channel4.com. If you're not in the UK you can access it using a VPN.

Rebel Tech Alliance is a non-profit dedicated to getting as many people off big tech products as possible. Why? Because that reduces the surveillance economy, and reducing that is good for individuals, society and democracy itself.