{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "description": "The Tech Coup is an insightful, easy read on the various ways in which tech and government intersect and conflict. Given the author's experience in the European parliament, advisory boards and broad involvement with the tech industry, she is well-positioned to expound on tech harms and regulation. The book itself provides a detailed explanation of the state of tech's influence on governments around the world, the US' reactive (or often nonexistent) approach to regulation, Europe's proactive approach to regulation and China's manipulative embrace of technology as a tool for control. I don't believe that markets and technology can save democracy in China, enable it or make it possible. It's used as a tool of surveillance and control, an approach which has been quite successful. What can be fought is the export of China's approach to managing the internet and its people. I do believe that Europe's — at times — heavy-handed approach to regulation is generally the right approach to dealing with large companies, tech and otherwise. The American approach is quite clearly failing as companies capture regulatory agencies, manipulate elections and buy favor with a thoroughly corrupt and vicious federal government. So, how do we solve this? When the government fails the people, when it stops serving the people, the people need to save the people. That will take the shape of embracing truly decentralized technology, abandoning centralized platforms, spending as little as possible with the largest of tech companies, pushing for legislative action at every level and a refusal to engage with companies that actively manipulate their users and corrupt their institutions. Institutional failure doesn't make change it possible, it shifts the responsibility to fight back onto the people those institutions have failed.",
  "path": "/reading/books/9780691241173/the-tech-coup",
  "publishedAt": "2025-10-19T00:00:00Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:sttgf52vkk46f6yuknvqxvgh/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "tech",
    "politics",
    "computers"
  ],
  "title": "The Tech Coup"
}