Tactic: Render to Caesar

"I'd love to opt out, but I have to use Google/Microsoft/X for work!"

I often hear some version of this complaint. It may be a health issue, or a workplace requirement, or the need to stay connected to the parents' WhatsApp group in your kid's classroom, or your app that monitors whether or not grandma took her meds today.

I know we're not always in control of our technological choices. But we are in control of what data we give to each system.

The platforms came to power and market dominance by being a one-stop-shop for Everything We Could Ever Need Or Do. We need to break that party up to stop them from using our data to control us, target us, deliver us propaganda, and target our neighbo(u)rs.

Render to Caesar the Things that are Caesar's

Here is an anti-platform technique I developed while starting up my own Cloud tools and infrastructure around 2013-2014. It's stood the test of time for me and been a useful way to keep using systems I don't have control over, while maintaining control over the data I do give to Big Tech to minimize my harms.

ItsThename comes from a Christian parable where early followers of Jesus inquire if they should be paying him their money instead of taxes to the Roman state. Jesus asks them, whose head is it on the coin? Why, Caesar's head, they reply, to which the answer is: "Render to Caesar only what is Caesar's." In other words, it's okay for his followers to pay taxes to Rome as long as they don't give away their spiritual fealty too.

I'm not asking for your spirituality, or your fealty! Instead I am asking that you consider those systems you really can't give up with a little more grace. For instance, you don't want to leave your birdwatching group on Facebook. It gives you so much joy!  But then you don't also need Facebook to stay in touch with your high school girlfriend's best friend's mother's aunt's neighbor. Why not use Facebook for just one thing -- birdwatching -- and nothing else?

This is the principle behind Render to Caesar. You choose to use one system for one thing only, so that's all they know about you. So Mark Zuckerberg knows you like birds: cool beans! He doesn't need to know everything else about you. He'll also show you pics in your feed of things that "other people who liked birds liked" and you will resist clicking because you don't want to feed his algorithms. To Facebook, all you like is birds. That's it. You're a one-hit wonder.

Think about it. How about: LinkedIn only for professional networks; X only for public service transit and weather announcements; your work email only for work email. How else might you divide up your digital life to reduce the control that platform oligarchs have over our world?

Render to Caesar. Only give them what you choose, and make it small.