User:Speaker616/2019 social media strike

2019 social media strike was a strike on 4th and 5th of July 2019 advocated by former Wikipedia co-founder Dr. Larry Sanger coinciding with the Independence Day of the United States (on 4 July 2019) against the social media tech giants over data control. It is supposed to be a two day strike inviting the social media users to switch off their access to social media platforms mainly such as Facebook and Twitter. The motive of the strike is to demand for the social media platforms to be decentralized from the top level management to the social media users in order to have the firm control over the data and also to solve the problems related to data privacy. He also requested the volunteers to join him during the course by boycotting the social media networks on 4th and 5th of July 2019 or at least on either one of these mentioned dates. Larry Sanger is critical of the social media administrators over the misuse of users data and questioned the failures of them in solving the problems related to data privacy.

The former Wikipedian also created a blog on his official website #Social media strike and also created an own petiton with the named titled Declaration of Digital Independence as a key to inspire the social media users to join him during the strike. He requested the volunteers those who are wishing to take part in the strike should sign in the relevant petition including the e-mail addresses in order to verify that they are legally taking part in the social media strike. The petition has gathered more than 1500 signatures as of 3 July 2019, a day before the strike. On 4 July 2019, the technology subsection of Reddit joined the social media strike by making that page private for 24 hours in a bid to show its solidarity against Facebook and Twitter.