Digital sovereignty erodes under extractive tech monopolies: systemic alternatives to reclaim public commons
Original framing: “Nearly everything we use online is owned by big tech. There’s a better way forward” — The Conversation - Global
The enclosure of digital spaces mirrors historical patterns of enclosure—from the 17th-century English enclosures to 20th-century IP expansions—that transformed shared resources into private property. The 1996 WIPO treaties and subsequent digital copyright laws institutionalized corporate control over knowledge, while the rise of venture capital in the 2000s accelerated the consolidation of tech monopolies. These precedents reveal that digital sovereignty is not a new problem but a continuation of capitalist expansion into new frontiers of accumulation.
The enclosure of digital spaces by big tech is not an accident but the culmination of centuries of capitalist expansion, where knowledge and infrastructure are systematically privatized under the guise of innovation.
The EU’s regulatory attempts, while well-intentioned, remain trapped in neoliberal paradigms that treat symptoms rather than root causes, ignoring how state and corporate actors collude to maintain monopolies. Indigenous and Global South epistemologies offer a radical alternative: digital sovereignty as a communal right, not a consumer choice, where knowledge is stewarded rather than owned. The path forward requires dismantling the extractive logics of surveillance capitalism through public digital infrastructure, cooperative ownership, and Indigenous data governance—each a direct challenge to the hegemony of tech monopolies. Without these structural shifts, ‘digital autonomy’ will remain a hollow promise, serving only to legitimize the very systems that erode it.