Funder Call Series on Market Power #3 – Liberating Democracy from Tech Oligarchy with Alexandra Geese and Maria Farrell

The Economic Democracy Project in collaboration with FABI and Philea will host “Liberating Democracy from Tech Oligarchy with Alexandra Geese and Maria Farrell” online on 24 November, the 3rd call in the Funder Call Series on Market Power.

For the last decade, leading foundations – not only in tech, but in economic justice, democracy, even climate – have understood Big Tech as a serious threat. We understand how tech platforms have been weaponised to spread falsehoods, interfere with elections, and divide nations. Yet too much of our funding has targeted the downstream symptoms of a monopolised tech economy – from fact-checking to direct advocacy with tech monopolists. Meanwhile, the executives of tech firms were shoring up a position that empowered them to undercut every gain we made.

The picture at Trump’s inauguration in January – and the payments for the White House ballroom today – makes the situation plain. Tech monopoly now wields its control of our economic infrastructures to dominate our politics; and under Trump, they are actively channelling this power towards authoritarian ends. To defend free and fair elections, philanthropy should focus its approach upstream of electoral-crisis monitoring and rapid response on social media. Our task is to reclaim public power over our economic infrastructures and our public square.

This call will see two of the leading lights tackling tech monopoly from within politics and culture, Alexandra Geese and Maria Farrell unpack where they see the threats to our democracy from tech monopoly unfolding most urgently, which tools of law and policy they think have the best chance of reclaiming our economy and democracy from tech monopoly, and how we generate the public and political momentum for the robust enforcement Europe needs.