Who knew the battleground for control over government wouldn’t be on the streets or in the courts, but deep inside the backend of federal databases? Yet that is what we’re confronting as Elon Musk has plugged into the Bitcoin, and building encrypted tools and open protocols beyond the reach of centralized power. Increasingly popular decentralized apps such as Bluesky and Signal prove that people want services free from centralized control.
A shift to decentralized internet services will bring challenges—including more complex security and less convenience. But these issues are all solvable. In the past, we didn’t let new challenges around democracy lead us to abandon our freedoms. We built systems that protected people while preserving our new rights. The same must happen here.
But without serious investment in open protocols and public infrastructure, alternatives will remain niche and difficult to use. If we don’t make a bold, collective effort across all parts of society, Big Tech’s grip will only tighten, leading to what AI pioneer Gregory Hinton calls the “fertile ground for fascism.”
We’ve fought centralized power before. Societies have overthrown theocratic rule by creating entirely new pluralistic systems, such as democracy in the United States. Now, we must challenge technofascism by building our own.
The only real choice is for us to go all in—building, using, and investing in decentralized technology before centralized control becomes even harder to undo.
Tricia Wang is a tech consultant and the Senior Advisor at DAIS (Decentralized AI Society), a member-driven organization advancing an open AI economy. The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
