John,

In case you missed it, we just experienced a major international system collapse. CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, ran a faulty update in July that caused problems for Microsoft Windows and led about 8.5 million computer systems to crash.¹

Airports were brought to a halt; healthcare providers were forced to cancel surgeries; and financial institutions like Visa and the London Stock Exchange were impacted. Not to mention the millions of people who just weren’t able to do their jobs as their computers displayed the “Blue Screen of Death.” This crash didn’t just come out of nowhere—and although most people may want to move on, we have to talk about what caused this and other tech crashes: Big Tech monopolies making bad products.

Because CrowdStrike holds too much of the market share on a cybersecurity product, one bad update led to massive crashes to global systems.

At Fight for the Future, we’re constantly raising the alarm on the threats that Big Tech poses to our world. We work tirelessly to explain what’s going on and propose principled policies that consider what’s best for real people. If you can, please start a monthly donation today to help support this work.

DONATE MONTHLY

Big Tech exists because there are a few companies with far too much power and control of our technologies. These monopolistic companies have bought out the competition, abused their power, and made it nearly impossible for any new companies to survive.

Companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have been able to grow and profit by the billions because of a lack of meaningful antitrust rules. Without strong policy to keep them in check, we’ve been left with a technological landscape dominated by a few, and those few are far more interested in moving fast and breaking things than they are with creating solid, secure products.

So what do we do? This is where Fight for the Future comes in. We’ve led a number of campaigns to build support for strong antitrust legislation, to push the Federal Trade Commission to hold Big Tech accountable, and to call out monopolistic practices by companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and more. We’ve organized coalitions of more than 120 civil society groups and businesses, coordinated targeted pushes on key targets to make antitrust a priority, and have continued to push this issue as a real solution to Big Tech problems.^2,3

We’re going to keep doing this work until we win, to ensure a future where a few big companies don’t run the world, and where a single glitch can’t take out so many major systems. But all this work takes funds, and ongoing donations really make a huge difference. Monthly gifts ensure we can keep up this work—taking advantage of major news moments and building behind-the-scenes so we’re as powerful as we need to be to take on Big Tech.

Right now, we’re asking 80 new monthly donors to join the team to make sure we can fight Big Tech and push for antitrust policies to build the world we believe is possible. If you can, please start a monthly gift today, in any amount, to make this work possible.

Together,

Caitlin and the team at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

1. Computer Weekly: https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/CrowdStrike-update-chaos-explained-What-you-need-to-know

2. Make Schumer Watch John Oliver: https://www.makeschumerwatchjohnoliver.com/