Resisting the Big Tech takeover

While researching the guides for our Big Tech themed magazine, core issues were discussed by the researches, such as: 

• the astonishingly fast rise to power of just a few big technology companies and the problems this is causing
• Big Tech's political influence and amplification of misinformation which is creating problems for democracies 
• the existential risk (or not) of robot takeover
• the implications and concerns of a new raft of AI-controlled military tools 
• emerging economic concerns around job losses due to AI implementation 
• environmental problems associated with the data centres needed to power Big Tech's products
• systematic tax avoidance practices by Big Tech companies.

If there is any consolation to be had in the midst of all this disruption, it is that high-quality human ingenuity is also apparent in the emergence of hundreds of new groups and strategies to resist and push back.

People and organisations are challenging Big Tech

Ethical Consumer is familiar with mapping civil society campaigns against industry impacts. And in areas like palm oil or forced labour we will commonly find up to 50 groups, institutes, or NGOs campaigning on an issue. In the area of Big Tech and AI though, with its impacts touching almost every aspect of our daily lives, the response from civil society has been extraordinary.

We have identified more than a thousand organisations, campaigns, think-tanks, university departments, and government projects specifically working on addressing the power of Big Tech and the connected rise of AI.

Because listing so many organisations is practically impossible for an organisation of our size, the list below is not exhaustive. We have picked a few categories and highlighted a few names that are illustrative of the variety and diversity of what is happening out there. There is also a bias towards groups speaking to ordinary citizens or consumers.

Organisations mainly working in the area of opposing the build out of new data centres because of climate and energy issues are profiled separately. There is an argument that this may be the most effective way to slow the “takeover” in the short term.

Tech-focused NGOs and alliances

People vs Big Tech
A pan-European coalition of more than 150 organisations focused on fixing social media feeds, stopping surveillance for profit, and breaking up tech monopolies. Has actions for individuals.
peoplevsbig.tech

All Tech is Human
A New York-based organisation trying to align tech with the public interest by bringing together "a diverse range of individuals and organisations across civil society, government, and industry." It has a Slack channel with over 10,000 members across 100 countries.
alltechishuman.org

Stop Killer Robots
Stop Killer Robots is an alliance of over 300 groups from over 70 countries. They are calling for a new international treaty prohibiting autonomous weapons systems which target humans directly. We explore tech and military connections in a separate article.
www.stopkillerrobots.org

Center for Humane Technology
This US-based non-profit focuses on challenging the “attention harvesting” designs of modern tech platforms. They "spur policy that incentivizes better tech design, and empowers individuals and communities to discover their agency in today’s evolving tech landscape".
www.humanetech.com

AlgorithmWatch
A non-profit based in Berlin and Zurich which fights for a world where algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) do not weaken justice, human rights, democracy, and sustainability but strengthen them.
algorithmwatch.org

The Citizens
The Citizens is a journalism and campaigning non-profit with a focus on technology and politics. Founded in 2020 by Carole Cadwalladr (of Cambridge Analytica scandal fame), it uses "storytelling to power movements that confront the unchecked power of Big Tech and states". It has a weekly email newsletter and Substack.
the-citizens.com

Ethical AI Alliance
A Spanish interdisciplinary collective of more than 1,200 people working on questions of accountability and power in AI systems. They have built an online global map of AI harms across conflict, surveillance, rights, and the environment.
ethicalaialliance.org

AI and Faith
A US-based organisation whose mission is to "encourage people of faith to bring time-tested, faith-based values and wisdom to the ethical AI conversation". It has links on its website to resources for Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and others. Indicative of a global trend perhaps, including the relatively tiny UK Quaker group "Justice and Equality in AI."
aiandfaith.org

Generalist NGOs concerned about corporate power

In many ways, the problems society faces here are because the power of Big Tech is part of a wider problem of corporate power more generally.

And two key causes of this are the intertwined issues of monopoly and political influence.

Ethical Consumer has written extensively on this subject since the introduction of our Challenging Corporate Power project in April 2025. 

We have produced campaign group profiles for two key groups related to this topic: 

• Balanced Economy Project 
• Global Justice Now 

Global Justice Now held a conference on “Big Tech Empires” in April 2026.

The Open Markets Institute in the USA, like the Balanced Economy team, focuses on “antitrust” or monopoly issues.

Regarding political influence, the always excellent Corporate Europe Observatory revealed in November 2025 that there are currently "more tech lobbyists in Europe than MEPs". 

Amnesty also produced a great report in August 2025 called "Breaking Up with Big Tech".

Specialist campaign groups

There are a whole raft of other organisations focusing on specific impacts of the Big Tech takeover, some of which have been mentioned in our specific tech guides. By way of example, here are just four.

The Molly Rose Foundation
A UK-based group working to prevent suicides by "holding tech companies and regulators accountable to ensure children are protected from harmful online content".
mollyrosefoundation.org

Data Labelers Association
A Kenya-based organisation founded by data labellers, which works for fair treatment, better conditions, and recognition for people working to identify harmful online content worldwide.
datalabelers.org

Electronic Frontier Foundation
A US non-profit focusing on privacy, free expression, and opposing government/corporate surveillance.
www.eff.org

Rebel Tech Alliance
A UK-based non-profit which helps people switch away from Big Tech in order to stop them "spying on us and
monetising our personal data".
www.rebeltechalliance.org

Academics

Although there are many academics linked into the groups listed above, there is also an obvious trend for many universities and departments to be setting up institutes and projects of their own to look into this area more particularly. By way of example, we list just two here.

AIethicist.org
Founded by the director of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, this website helpfully lists more than 70 academic institutes and organisations working on AI ethics – though not always through the lens of corporate power.
www.aiethicist.org

The Oxford Institute for ethics in AI
Part of the Faculty of Philosophy focusing on appropriate governance and regulatory regimes for AI.
www.oxford-aiethics.ox.ac.uk

Governments and public bodies

In our guide to AI chatbots and LLM tools, we wrote about how the EU AI Act of 2024 was, according to Amnesty, “one of the most ambitious attempts globally to protect people from the harms of AI systems”. 

Ferocious lobbying by Big Tech (see NGOs concerned about corporate power above) looks like it might have thrown sand in the wheels of this Act in the short-term, but there should be no doubt that, while these impacts remain, this kind of regulation needs to eventually become universal.

Public bodies and governments are slowly starting to fight back against tech monopolies, through digital sovereignty.

The non-profit EuroStack has described Europe as a “digital colony” of US firms and urged redirecting capital toward domestic innovation. EU leaders are looking into the concept of a European-led “digital stack” which would cover artificial intelligence, cloud computing, software and hardware.

However, a counter argument is that if each individual country develops its own software it can weaken its bargaining power, and may be feeding into a right wing nationalist agenda.  

Digital sovereignty 

Globally and across Europe various organisations, public bodies, countries and the EU Parliament are implementing ways to reduce their reliance on US big tech through switching to European, and often open source, alternatives. This type of shift is often termed digital sovereignty – having more control over your data, your tech and your work, rather than being controlled by, and dependent upon, proprietary monopolies.

Ownership of your own tech and data is important. 

In 2025 the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) lost access to his Microsoft Outlook email, along with eight other ICC staff including six judges, due to sanctions imposed by US President Donald Trump for pursuing investigations into officials from the US and Israel. The ICC has now moved its internal software system from Microsoft to Office.EU, an independent European open-source alternative provider.

Office.EU offers the full suite of tools commonly provided by Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, email, calendars, file storage, and video meetings. Maarten Roelfs, the founder of Office.EU said for tech, “Industry standards should require clear data ownership, transparency about where data is stored and which laws apply, portability to avoid lock-in, and resilience during vendor or geopolitical disruption.” 

Denmark’s Digital Minister Caroline Stage Olsen said, 

“We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely.” 

Financial benefits

It's not just about ownership of data. There's a financial benefit to shifting away from Big Tech as well. 

One German state (Schleswig-Holstein) estimates it will save over €15 million in licensing costs in 2026 alone. 

Many of the alternatives being chosen are FOSS: free and open source software.

However, transitioning to open source and/or home-grown alternatives takes investment and time, which needs to be factored into the planning when organisations are considering moving away from established Big Tech platforms and software.

European examples of moving from Big Tech to alternatives 

This is not an exhaustive list, but shows what is happening at governmental, regional and sector-specific levels.

Austria

• The Austrian military has transitioned to LibreOffice, a software package offering word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, mirroring Microsoft 365's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (A German non-profit The Document Foundation is behind LibreOffice.)

Denmark 

• The Ministry of Digital Affairs is moving away from Microsoft services, replacing Office 365 with LibreOffice.
• Danish Road Traffic Authority will pilot SIA Open, a project by the Danish Governmental IT Agency to replace Microsoft services (Windows OS and other applications) with open source alternatives.
• The cities of Aarhus and Copenhagen are shifting from Microsoft Office.

France

• Various government departments will ditch Microsoft for Linux as the operating system to help regain control over their data and digital infrastructure, starting with the National digital directorate. 
• the National health insurance body is migrating 80,000 of its agents to a set of home-grown tools for messaging, video calls and file transfers. The national health data platform is also set to move to a sovereign solution by the end of 2026. 
• Every government department is to switch to Visio, its homegrown, MIT-licensed alternative to Teams and Zoom by 2027. Visio is based on the open source end-to-end encrypted video meeting tool Jitsi. 

Germany

• Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, is switching to open source documents, only .odf .pdf will be allowed. This is for every level of public administration, from federal government bodies down to states and municipalities. Proprietary document formats from Microsoft like .doc, .ppt, and .xls are not included.
• German state of Schleswig-Holstein switched from Microsoft Windows OS to Linux, and other Microsoft alternatives, to ensure that sensitive government and citizen data remains within Germany and is not subject to potential access by US companies. 

Italy

• The Ministry of Defense transitioned 150,000 PCs to LibreOffice and the Open Document Format. Regional governments in Emilia Romagna, Perugia, Trento, and Bolzano have followed suit. Italian procurement law now requires public administrations to consider reused or free software before committing to proprietary licenses. 

Spain 

• Barcelona has invested in open-source software as part of its broader digital strategy. And the government of Extremadura confirmed thousands of PCs in its healthcare system run open-source office applications.

Switzerland

• The Conference of Swiss Data Protection Officers passed a resolution for the Swiss government to reconsider their use of international cloud services for handling sensitive data, particularly Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, due to privacy, security and sovereignty reasons.

European-wide organisations

As well as individual countries, the European Parliament is looking into digital sovereignty, for reasons of data ownership, digital privacy, cybersecurity, and more technological autonomy, and to avoid “large tech companies’ distortive practices”. 

And the Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (DC EDIC) was launched in 2025, to coordinate national efforts to develop open, interoperable and reusable digital solutions that can be shared across borders (also known as Digital Commons). The DC EDIC currently comprises France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, and is supported by candidate members (Luxembourg, Slovenia) and observers (Poland and Belgium).

Next steps in challenging corporate power

Research for this article was funded by donors to our Challenging Corporate Power crowdfunder in 2025. Many thanks to all of them.

Our Challenging Corporate Power project is ongoing in 2026, and challenging the power of Big Tech and collaborating around it remains a key part of this work.

Our crowdfunder is still open for donations, so please contribute if you can, or contact us to discuss other ideas if you are interested.