Hans de Zwart and the digital oligarchs

Hans de Zwart is a lecturer and researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and he recently co-founded the Racism and Technology Center. He was the Executive Director of the Dutch digital civil rights organisation Bits of Freedom, fighting for freedom of communication and privacy on the internet.

In the past he was Shell’s Senior Innovation Adviser for Global HR and Learning Technologies, before that a Moodle consultant for Stoas Learning and he started his career as a Physical Education teacher at a high school in Amsterdam.

We sat down with Hans to talk about his Big Lebowski quotes project that inadvertedly showed a deeper problem of digital oligarchy and the big tech companies/social media platforms.

Citizen D advice:

• Do not rely on automated content systems to solve the social problems of free speech.
• Store your content on mediums and platforms you have complete control over.
• Watch The Big Lebowski, it’s an awesome movie!

More information:

• Big Lebowski Quote Search Engine – website
• How The Dude Was Duped By Big Tech – article
• We can’t let tech companies use algorithms to police us after COVID-19 – article
• Big Tech is overselling AI as the solution to online extremism – article

This podcast was first published by Podcast Državljan D by Domen Savič on 15 January 2021.