Why Don’t Tech Workers Put a Stop to Tech Oligarchy?

By Heb Braggs

There is something to be said for the power that memes and other comedic forms have to temperature-check the moment they arrive. I have been thinking about the Torment Nexus idea a lot, especially as high modernist trends re-emerge with AI, space exploration, and the Abundance agenda. For those not overly preoccupied with Twitter, the Torment Nexus is a meme lamenting the ways in which Big Tech seems to miss the point of most science fiction stories: the tech oligarchs see the erosion of community and society warned about in those stories as cool and beneficial. Clearly, there’s a disconnect between those folks and everyday people.

A big question that this raises is encapsulated in Niemöller’s First They Came. In this well-known poem, Niemöller reflects on how he and others did not speak out when various groups were targeted, only realizing too late that their own silence enabled injustice to spread. This raises a question that is repeatedly timely: why, in the face of unignorable despair, do more people not fight back? More precisely, why do those with privilege, like money, whiteness or lightness, cisness, or ability, not act together for effective collective action?

To understand why privileged individuals in tech may not act, it is important to consider the larger context. Given the pervasiveness of digital and computer technologies in the modern world, where saying the word “technology” is more likely to conjure images of phones and laptops than spoons and trains, tech is very important to consider when trying to understand what’s happening around us. Yet computer and digital technologies often seem inaccessible. As digital literacy remains low and these technologies become more complex, they increasingly resemble a “black box” that is hard for most people to understand.

Part of this is inaccessibility stems from the labor composition of these tech spaces. Many of the detrimental aspects are not felt as acutely or early by those inside the bubble. Since most anti-oppressive action typically arises from those impacted, this disparity becomes clearer. If worker movements, for example, are born out of precarity and disrespect, that’s historically been hard to find among tech workers. According to CompTIA’s 2025 State of the Tech Workforce and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)’s High Tech, Low Inclusion, tech workers (i.e., folks working in “professional” roles, as opposed to “laborers”) have much higher or better median incomes, job security, labor conditions, and industry growth than those outside of the sector. It is often understood to be the lack of those things that encourage labor activism elsewhere.  To say it another way, tech workers seem less likely to organize since they experience fewer immediate harms, have more to lose, and do not always see themselves as vulnerable.

However, this isn’t a totalizing assessment, if the existence of organizations like the Tech Workers Coalition, Code-CWA, and Kickstarter United are anything to go by.

These cases give a fuller picture of what’s going on. Looking at campaigns like No Tech for Apartheid or earlier ones around the #MeToo movement, there is a connection that can be drawn between activism around social issues and activism around labor. This is explored in depth by the research team that wrote Unlikely Organizers, but the gist is this: socially-minded employees of these organizations that (at least used to) claim social benefit expect their companies to respond to social issues. When companies fail, workers resist. This reveals the tension between professional producers and management. The case of Kickstarter United is emblematic of this. Importantly, these examples demonstrate that activism is possible within tech spaces, complicating the narrative of worker complacency.

With this in mind, as capital’s continual push towards growth and profit intensifies, those within tech can move towards building new relations. As tech professionals get attacked on both sides, precarity becomes more apparent as profit opportunities change and these changes primarily impact those who are marginalized, whether it be due to their identity or as retaliation for activism.

These efforts are small and isolated, though. At best, they are in the lineage of minority unions, with all of the pratfalls – particularly isolation, heightened targeting, and unclear messaging – that can bring. More likely, these instances of activism, given their smallness relative to the sector, seem like oddball blips on a smooth sailing ship. I am reminded of Microsoft’s crackdown on anti-Israel protests, the demands of which they seemingly heeded, while shoring themselves up to prevent further such activities.

It is within this context of limited and sometimes isolated action that a broader perspective emerges. The rise in activity can be understood in two related ways: first, as part of a broader increase in labor mobilization in the US; and second, as constrained by the structural characteristics of the sector. This limitation, rooted in the sector’s relative comfort, will likely erode as precarity increases, if adjacent professional spaces and the layoffs in the sector are anything to go by. 

Every historical moment can be seen as an inflection point, but today this seems especially true. From the revival of engagement with outer space to the widespread proliferation of and resistance to AI and its infrastructure, to the pitched battles over “safety” on the internet, industry and “users” alike are in various conflicts over technology’s future.

There is a path forward that is broadly dystopian: one where the tech oligarchs and their mechanisms of control suppress folks, where things look like all the sci-fi warnings they seem hell-bent on bringing to life. This would come to pass if those of us in the 99% are not able to reorganize so as to stop them from acting on their ideas for the future.

On the other hand, a more hopeful trajectory is possible – one I’ll call convivial. This is inspired by Ivan Illich, someone who wrote about, among other things, the idea of “convivial technology,” which is technology that non-experts can understand, use, and adapt for their own needs in creative and flexible ways. To this, I'd add permacomputing – which emphasizes sustainable, local and resilient approaches to digital infrastructure – and things like cyberdecks, which are computers that one can build themselves.  Though the issues with technology are not solely design issues (we cannot just “make” “better technology” to “solve” social problems, as that is often a technocratic and high modernist perspective that fails at its aims), taking into account design as it relates to ecocide, violence, and all of the other issues that technology is implicated in is paramount.

Thinking about design is necessary but insufficient for social change. Finding different ways to relate to technology is part of the process of meeting individual and social needs without causing individual or social detriment. This starts to approach solarpunk territory: ecological, social, and deliberative communities, where technology is (re)built for people and place rather than profit.

Achieving this better future requires a critical shift. Tech workers and other professionals have to dislodge themselves from their current position as the center of their universe. By in large, this means committing what Amilcar Cabral called “suicide as a class,” where folks with the privileges/benefits conferred by tech work and/or the tech sector think beyond those immediate niceties. By connecting to the more precarious working and underclasses, these folks can, especially given their relationship to the production of these digital technologies, become accomplices to movements against the domination of these technologies.

Concretely, this could look like framing everything around decentering one’s personal and immediate benefits, or even actively undermining them. This is critical, as the outsized pay and perks of being a professional come at the expense of those without that same level of stability.

This decentering and undermining can look like efforts as robust as the activism discussed. It could also be low-lift, like consistently supporting crowdfunds and collaborating with class peers to fund and aid the organizing activity of more precarious folks. The benefit of both of these approaches, especially if they are done humbly, are that if a professional ends up in a more precarious position due to layoffs, they would be aware of and able to tap into a wider network of care.

If this is done, a whole world opens up: centering the most marginalized in the technology space can spur collective action, reduce its harms, and enhance its benefits. Flashes of this can be seen in the anti-Israel campaigns mentioned earlier, where people act beyond immediate and obvious interests for the sake of something deeper. When it comes to discussing labor conditions and “what it’s like” to work in tech as a professional, conversations should start with folks like labelers and those who manually control the Waymo cars or delivery robots. Of course, folks in the communities where data centers are being built should also be in these starting-point conversations.  

By tying together tech professionals, marginalized workers in or around tech, and the communities that are shouldered with the “externalities,” collective action can generate the energy needed for change. For folks who are in that third category, those who aren’t in the industry, a relatively antagonistic stance should be taken towards the industry and its workers. To be clear, situational alliances can be made. However, even those should be treated like finding double agents that can sabotage the machinery, rather than true allies – at least until specific folks prove otherwise.

This anti-tech action can extend beyond its current forms of DIY and analog efforts or advocacy by acting autonomously. Rather than solely encouraging elected politicians to pass legislation against data centers or boycotting AI chatbots, folks could see those efforts as part of a wider social movement (that may need to be created), where all of these separate issues are composed with other issues and efforts.

These could relate to bodily autonomy, ecology, decolonization, youth liberation, trans liberation, and other pressing issues. Bringing these things together has two main benefits. One, it mirrors reality, as their disconnections are more artificial than actual: for instance, the development of data centers can’t be talked about without considering their ecological impacts, and their ecological impacts can’t be talked about without thinking about who owns land and how, and so on. The other benefit is that it encourages creativity and solidarity, as the connections may not be intuitive. A non-indigenous person may not think of land ownership as a hot-button issue when thinking of technology, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

In all, the tech oligarchs and their followers have caused a lot of problems. That much is clear. What may be less clear is the fact that they have also set the tempo for how resistance against them might look. Folks don’t want the Torment Nexus, but many of us are using social media every day, which is surely tormenting us. Given this, it is easy to go in the other direction, and declare a war against all computers. Maybe that is the right course of action.

However, since that is not very actionable, it is beneficial to try and look at specific things that can be done to reject specific technologies and our dependence on them. Alternative social networks can be built and bolstered, like Mastodon, a Twitter alternative. Leaning into the building of cyberdecks and call trees and community spaces and other ways to keep in touch is critical. This stuff can also act as a base for other issues; if a disaster happens, or if a trans community member is treated poorly by a shop or bar, folks are able to mobilize without having to rely on Instagram flyering or Twitter posts. By taking these small steps, the foundation for wider actions, like more extensive activism campaigns, can be laid.

Until folks can figure out how to get rid of Big Tech, organizing as its victims and products – while peeling off segments of its professional vanguard – is a durable approach that can expand as capacity does.

Heb Braggs is a New Afrikan enby writer, artist, and organizer. Their work explores the intersections of ecology, (techno)culture, and social change – from Black Anarchic perspectives. They are a founding editor of Chaos and Conviviality, a media project working to support autonomous care infrastructures and fighting fascists.