People-Powered Finance to the Rescue?

Summary

At the heart of this new Nesta/Co-ops UK report is a profound question — can people-power finance a new wave of community-owned apps and online services?

How we can wrestle back our apps from the tech giants and end surveillance capitalism.

2018 was the year where the twisted intersection of apps, data exploitation, privacy and corporate tech giants went mainstream.

While the issues had been brewing for a while — such as the revelation of addiction design in most apps, the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Mark Zuckerberg’s subsequent testimony before the U.S. Congress — it seems like 2018 was when questioning the tech giants became the norm. A new term called surveillance capitalism also entered the public lexicon.