As you may recall, in 2018, almost all of the major tech companies…

As you may recall, in 2018, almost all of the major tech companies made a concerted effort to deplatform Alex Jones.

Within the space of a few months, Facebook, Apple, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Mailchimp, Paypal, and Twitter all banned him. To date, his domain registrar (Names.com), credit card processor (Authorize.net), CDN (Level 3), and internet service provider have not banned him. But it is probably only a matter of time before they do.

The major tech companies have also increasingly banned/restricted other controversial groups: gun enthusiasts, recreational drug advocates, cryptocurrency enthusiasts, sex workers, "far right" conservatives, ISIS, Nation of Islam, etc.

Now I don't want to debate whether they were right to ban those groups. IMO, all of those companies have every right to boot whomever they want from their platform.

However, if you depend on one of those platforms for your income, you could be immediately cut off from your customers, supporters, and funds if you anger the gods at those companies.

And the companies are enforcing their acceptable use policies ever more stringently.

For example, Youtube has now entirely demonetized Arielle Scarcella (661 K subscribers), a lesbian sex educator and Youtube personality:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ArielleIsHamming

If you watch any of her youtube videos, you'll find that she's quite far from Alex Jones in views and temperament.

IMO, if you want to say anything that would be considered controversial in Silicon Valley, you must be prepared to be demonetized, blocked, shadowbanned, or outright deleted.

And with the Corona virus pandemic in effect, combined with the upcoming presidential election, tech companies are likely to be even more tetchy than ever.

Fortunately, many tools now exist to reach your users directly, without censorship or intermediary.

Here's a few of them. All of them are open source, self-hostable/P2P, and don't invade your privacy. Some are nearly drop-in replacements for existing services. Others will require some work to set up and use. And still others are bleeding edge technology. But all of them are working software with communities and companies actively developing them.

Signal (SMS, Google Hangouts, FB Messenger)
https://signal.org/

Protonmail (Gmail)
https://protonmail.com/

Scuttlebutt (Facebook)
https://scuttlebutt.nz/

Notabug (Reddit)
https://notabug.io/

BigBlueButton (Zoom, Twitch)
https://bigbluebutton.org/

OpenBroadcaster (Radio, Twitch, Youtube)
https://openbroadcaster.com/about-us

Althea Network (Comcast)
https://althea.net/

Jitsi (FB Messenger, Whatsapp)
https://jitsi.org/

Onionshare (File sharing)
https://onionshare.org/

OpenBazaar (Paypal, Amazon, Ebay)
https://openbazaar.com/

Monero (Paypal/Venmo, Visa/Mastercard, Cash)
https://www.getmonero.org/

Cryptpad.fr (Google Docs)
https://cryptpad.fr/

Tor (DNS, VPN)
https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/host-your-own-tor-hidden-service-with-custom-onion-address-0180159/

I2P (DNS, VPN)
https://medium.com/@mhatta/how-to-set-up-untraceable-websites-eepsites-on-i2p-1fe26069271d

Lbry.TV (Youtube)
https://lbry.com/roadmap

Peertube (Youtube)
https://joinpeertube.org/

BTCPayServer and Librepatron (Visa/Mastercard, Patreon, Authorize.net)
https://blog.btcpayserver.org/librepatron-patreon-alternative/

Bisq (Banking, Currency exchange)
https://bisq.network/

Sporestack (VPS hosting)
https://sporestack.com/

Skynet (Decentralized AWS, CDN, Cloudfare)
https://siasky.net/

Skybin (Pastebin)
https://siasky.net/CAAVU14pB9GRIqCrejD7rlS27HltGGiiCLICzmrBV0wVtA

git-ssb (Github)
https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro