One of the biggest and most welcome surprises of the last few years and especially over the last few months has been the growth of alt tech. When these sites started up they were very small when compared to the behemoths of Twitter, Facebook and You Tube. Sometimes, as in the case of Gab, they struggled against de-platforming from those services that they needed to survive and the Big Tech entities seemed at the time to be at best approving of the de-platforming and at worst actively colluding in it.

Over the last couple of years these alt tech platforms have grown tremendously. This growth has I believe been helped by heavy handed censorship of what Big Tech appears to classify as wrong-thinkers. The last year especially has seen Big Tech platforms purge thousands of conservative voices in the run up to the US Presidential election, something that many observers predicted would happen, along with a purge on those users who ask awkward questions about the official narrative with regards to coronavirus.

This censorship by Big Tech platforms has caused a mass exodus to platforms like Gab, Parler and Bitchute and others On these platforms people, not just conservatives but free thinkers in general, can speak freely without the fear of being censored provided that they abide by the, very liberal when compared with for example the law in the United Kingdom, the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The growth of alt tech has also been a massive kick in the balls for leftists and identity politics groups who have relied on good relations with Big Tech platforms to get these platforms to censor that which they demand to be censored. Nearly all those whom one particular identity politics group managed to get kicked off of Twitter are now firm favourites on Parler and Gab and have quite large and actively engaged followings. Alt Tech has allowed those censored to stick two fingers up at the left and identity politics groups and that to me, as someone who wants free speech for all including those who I despise, a very good thing indeed.

The rise of alt tech platforms has been a massive boost to free thinkers and free speech advocates in nations such as the United Kingdom that effectively do not have any protections for freedom of speech. Britons can now speak their minds freely by bypassing the censorious Big Tech platforms and entering the world of alt social media. Some of these platforms, such as Gab are openly hostile to approaches from British law enforcement who request the user details and physical addresses of UK wrong thinkers in order to prosecute them under Britain’s increasingly draconian speech laws. I know of at least one occasion when an approach has been made by British police to Gab which was met with a polite version of ‘go forth and multiply’ by Andrew Torba Gab’s CEO, accompanied by the reminder to the British force in question that Gab and therefore its users, operates under the protection of the US First Amendment.

As I said earlier the situation when these new platforms were created is very much different from what they are now. Although they started off small they are piling on new users at a high rate of knots. Gab for example in the course of about a week and a half put on 7.1 million new users whilst Parler managed to add 4.5 million new users in five days and is now at the top of at least one social media application download chart.

This is an astonishing level of growth for platforms that Big Tech tried to strangle at birth. They grow and continue to grow as more people from the USA and across the world realise that they are being censored by the Big Tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and others.

This growth must be really pissing off the censorious left and equally censorious identity politics groups that have invested heavily, sometimes using UK taxpayers money, to put pressure on Facebook and Twitter especially to remove those who they see as wrong thinkers such as Tommy Robinson for example. We can see how the Left is worried about alt tech by the way that they are trying to persuade people that these platforms are ‘far right’ or ‘dangerous’ when all they really are are spaces where people can speak freely, put their ideas up for debate and have them debated. However as many of us have come to learn, the Left and certain identity politics groups dislike open debate,they’d much rather we mindlessly repeat their mantras and not have their politics and their narratives examined too closely.

Do I like everything that is on alt tech? No of course I don’t. There are, as there would be in any free speech environment, loonies, but the great beauty of alt tech is that I the user am in control of my own experience. I can choose to engage with and mock the loonies if that is the mood that I’m in or I can block or mute them so that they don’t get in the way of conversations with those who I do want to speak to. I can be my own curator on alt tech and not have to rely on some rabidly politically biased gender studies graduate to create my social media experience for me. That power of personal choice to manage my own experience and to create not an echo chamber but a digital room with those with whom I may agree with or disagree with is why I’m a great fan of alt tech. This freedom is why I will stay with it and never ever go back to the censorship heavy Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter.