Divesting from Big Tech: Alternative Possibilities for Research and Futuring in Social Computing

The CSCW community’s research has traditionally supported by large technology companies such as Google, Meta, or Microsoft. This is not only limited to financial support: our sites of research and our design initiatives have also traditionally included these large corporations, their platforms, and their services. This panel brings together people working on questions of social computing and distributed collaboration outside of Big Tech companies–whether by fostering community work and activism, crafting legistlation, seeking alternative funding streams, leading unionization or federated ventures, or promoting alternative ways of interacting digitally. Panelists will consider how CSCW research can and should consider alternative sources of support and sites of influence, how imbrication with specific technologies developed by Google, Meta or Twitter has shaped our findings about "social" technologies, issues in system design and maintenance outside of the Big Tech ecosystem, how to engage with regulatory stakeholders to enact change, and how to work productively outside of platform capitalism. With increasing public concern over the power of large technology companies and public gaffes with respect to once-trusted corporate infrastructures, the panelists show what we gain and lose analytically, practically, and in terms of sociotechnical futuring when CSCW practitioners look beyond the Big Tech ecosystem.