Reflections on "Don't be evil"

Strong competition is also a form of accountability
Photo by Nathanaël Desmeules

Context: a response to the launch of The European Social Stack

Excited to see this , and proud to be a signatory on the The European Social Stack .

I want to emphasize something that may not be intuitive, but I do think is important: initiatives like The European Social Stack are good (in the broadest possible sense) for the US, and for real people working in traditional Big Tech companies.

The idea that the monopolies (formal or de facto) are full of inherently evil people is a seductive lie. The reality is that, given time, every form of concentrated power will make each of us - any of us - the worst form of ourselves. And the greater the power imbalance, the more aggressive the corrupting influence will be.

Consequently, the process of balancing power is less about taking power from the "evil" and giving it to the "good", and more about restoring the conditions in which we can all pursue the good - aided by the real accountability that only exists when power is balanced.

This won't be accomplished by legislation alone. Legislation is written and enforced by those who already have power (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?). Not surprisingly, the present style of performative tech lawmaking has served to entrench rather than weaken the most powerful incumbents - turning fines and penalties into a cozy bribe that makes real competition infeasible.

Rather, restoring balance requires getting stronger.

It will require new technical approaches that support cooperative resilience (like the European Social Stack ). It will require the courage to change the game, embracing power-fracturing policies like adversarial interoperability (strongly recommend the full video from Cory Doctorow's https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/ ). And it will require a much higher tolerance for risk, competition, iteration, and failure.

It's not just Europe that stands to benefit. Restoring a balance of power is the path to restored dignity for the global community of users, builders, and institutions that have - for too long - been poisoned by extreme concentrations of power.

Original post on LinkedIn