Clicking pause, for now

Hi friends!

We’re writing to let you know, with heavy hearts, that The People newsletter is being put on hold for the time being. As campaigners at People vs Big Tech and journalists at the Citizens, for nearly a year we’ve been working together to produce 20 editions of this newsletter to our nearly 8,000 members here on Ghost – the open-source platform we’ve been publishing on.

We are proud to have covered the harms Big Tech is posing to our lives, particularly in Europe, drawing on the expertise of the People vs Big Tech movement and the reporting skills of journalists at the Citizens.

We’ve tackled weighty themes, from pollution to genocide, we’ve responded to major news events, from the UK race riots to Trump’s electoral win, and we’ve somehow also had fun: making memes and short videos to engage our audiences, and – ironically – appease the very algorithms we criticse. We’ve also tried, where possible, to empower our readers with actions to take, because we believe we can all be part of building a better internet for everyone.

We are planning to pick this project up again in the future, but the current funding climate for those of us holding Big Tech to account (aka the ‘toxic censorship industry’) is such that we need to click pause on the newsletter for now. One organisation we applied for funding from an org in the US, for example, was being attacked by Elon Musk on Twitter a week later, and was restricted from accessing their Congressionally appropriated funds under the new administration.

We’d like to thank everyone who made the newsletter happen over the past year: the journalists we commissioned, the experts who spoke to them, and the editors and social media pros who got the stories out there.

And most of all, we want to thank YOU for reading it. But this isn’t a call to unsubscribe. We’ll be back – watch this space! Meanwhile...

the Citizens has launched a Substack which includes journalism about Big Tech and its oligarchs, and events with world leading experts in this space. You can subscribe here: citizensreunited.substack.com

Check out our most recent one – it’s really informative and a bit silly in places. Investigative journalist and the Citizens co-founder Carole Cadwalladr interviewed two of the smartest thinkers on tech and culture – Kyle Chayka and Yancey Strickler – about how social media algorithms are creating a type of cultural globalisation and what we can do to fight back. Hope you enjoy!

People vs Big Tech is ramping up the fight to challenge the unchecked power of tech giants and hold them to account. Their grip on our lives and democracies is out in the open—and they’re no longer even pretending to play by human rights or democratic rules.

Now’s our chance to strike back. Ahead of a landmark EU competition ruling that could force the break-up of Google, we're campaigning hard to Break Up Big Tech. It’s a rare and powerful opportunity to take on the system, not just the symptoms—to dismantle the structures that fuel manipulation, inequality, and digital harm.

Want to take part? Sign this petition by People vs Big Tech member WeMove, if you're in Germany, sign this petition from our member LobbyControl, and of course, keep an eye out for more bold moves from us soon: peoplevsbig.tech/news

Solidarity and gratitude,

Rasha Abdul-Rahim, Interim Executive Director, People vs Big Tech
Clara Maguire, Executive Director, the Citizens