WHY WE FIGHT

The internet promised liberation. It delivered surveillance capitalism. Here’s why we started IFFTU and what we intend to do about it.

Twenty years ago, the promise was simple: connect everyone, democratize information, flatten hierarchies. The internet was supposed to be the great equalizer. And for a brief, shining moment, it was.

Then we watched that promise get strip-mined. Platform by platform, the open web was enclosed. Users became products. Attention became currency. And the tools that were supposed to liberate us became the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus in human history.

THE PROBLEM ISN’T TECHNOLOGY

Let’s be clear: the problem was never the technology itself. TCP/IP doesn’t have an opinion about your privacy. HTML doesn’t care about your attention span. The problem is what happens when the incentive structure around technology optimizes for extraction instead of empowerment.

Every major platform started with genuine utility. Search that helped you find things. Social networks that connected you with friends. Communication tools that made distance irrelevant. The utility was real. But the business model required something more: your data, your attention, your behavior — packaged and sold.

WHAT IFFTU IS

IFFTU — “I Fight For The Users” — is a collective of developers, researchers, and ordinary people who believe technology should serve humanity, not the other way around.

We build tools. Open source, radically transparent, designed to solve real problems without extracting anything from the people who use them. No tracking. No ads. No data harvesting. No engagement optimization. Just tools that work, owned by everyone.

THE FIGHT AHEAD

Knowledge belongs to everyone. It always has. Somewhere along the way we let ourselves forget that — let it get locked behind paywalls and platform terms and algorithms that decide who gets to see what. It’s in the interest of humanity to undo that. All of it.

Our first project is called Alexandria. The library that never burns. We can’t say more yet. But it’s coming.

This is just the beginning. More projects. More fights to pick with the status quo. If you believe technology should serve people, not exploit them — you’re one of us.