Mexican Activists Are Building Digital Defenses Against Big Tech Colonialism

In Mexico, the tech oligarchy is thriving.

Amazon is increasing its spending and plans to lavish $6 billion in U.S. currency in Mexico during this year and next. Meanwhile, the multinational technology company Nvidia is manufacturing AI servers (exempted from tariffs) at factories in Mexico.

Roughly 60 percent of the U.S.’s AI servers are made in Mexico, and Foxconn and Nvidia have recently begun production of a $900 million assembly plant in Mexico for AI servers using Nvidia’s GB200 Superchips for Project Stargate, the OpenAI and U.S. government program aimed at consolidating U.S. AI dominance.

Mexico recently announced that Netflix will spend $1 billion in U.S. currency over four years producing content within its borders. Beyond entertainment, Netflix is a tech company using sophisticated software and big data analytics to provide personalized content delivery and streaming media. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos talked about a vision for Mexico of “prosperity … and growth.” The move is strategic, allowing Netflix to increase its exclusive content at a lower cost without considering the vision or needs of locals. Meanwhile Mexico has decreased its culture budget by 31 percent to focus on this collaboration with Hollywood.

Google, DiDi, and others are creeping into Mexico’s banking sector by offering loans and digital wallets. Google and Meta took up 82.5 percent of digital advertising in 2022 in Mexico, while Amazon, Walmart, Airbnb, and others displace traditional and local initiatives.

Meanwhile, Google search results are dominated by U.S. companies, funneling money and resources out of Mexico. Platforms like Facebook tolerate and promote sexism, with serious consequences in a nation with high rates of femicide.

In response, Mexican activists are standing up to Big Tech — promoting the use of feminist servers where people can put their safety first, autonomous servers that can help protect communities and activists in danger, and other tools for greater digital agency.

Facebook feeds and Google results certainly won’t be highlighting the growing resistance to the Big Tech empire in countries like Mexico. But for many in the Global South, such digital activism can be a question of life and death.

Of the ten richest people in the world, seven are founders of tech companies, including Elon Musk ($342 billion) and Mark Zuckerberg ($216 billion). These companies have monopolistic control of search engines (Google has 90 percent of the market), mobile operating systems, cloud storage, digital advertising and social media. This gives them gatekeeper power to decide who can be heard both online and in the broader public sphere.

Meta’s revenue has grown from $1.87 billion in 2010 to $160 billion in 2024 — in part by exploiting big data, generating dependence through agreements with telecommunications companies, and preloading the app on new devices. Big Tech has then exploited network effects to keep users locked in, and bought out any competitors, generating dependence through monopolization. Meta bought at least 28 companies between 2007 and 2022.

Further, Big Tech has taken advantage of economically weaker countries to pitch themselves as “supporting” their education systems by embedding their programs into schools and creating dependency from a young age. Mexico’s education department has a deal with Microsoft to provide students with Office for free even though LibreOffice is already free. Meta is also “supporting” Mexico City’s coding school by providing courses and certifications.

Big Tech further exploits vulnerable populations by positioning themselves in the nonprofit sector. “They provide services for a low cost or for free. … They can be quite aggressive, creating legitimacy and dependency as they do,” Mayeli Sanchez, a Mexican digital activist and executive director of Técnicas Rudas, told Truthout. For example, Google says it “supports” media organizations in Mexico through its Google News Initiative to provide them (many of which are nonprofit and likely struggling financially) with digital transformation and training. In that way, Google continues to ensure its dominance.

While U.S. companies profit, Global South workers do much of the traumatic and tedious work. Kenyan, Indian and Filipino workers, who make up the majority of low-paid tech laborers, are paid between $1.32 and $2 an hour to train AI algorithms and sift through and flag violent and disturbing content. Moreover, minerals like cobalt, nickel and lithium used for manufacturing AI hardware are looted from Global South countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the expense of the environment and labor conditions.

Big Tech’s Colonial Impacts

Through monopolies, the Big Tech companies can also control the dominant narrative to suit their interests. Those interests revolve around “free” trade (as Amazon and Washington Post owner, Jeff Bezos stated recently) and U.S. empire, in stark opposition to the Global South preserving or developing its own systems of information, culture, news and research.

“Mexico is one of the countries that provides the most users to Facebook … but we don’t receive any kind of benefit … because that platform isn’t a benefit in of itself. It fosters a damaging culture,” Sanchez said, describing social media’s impact on attention spans.

Some 90 percent of data used to train AI comes from the Global North. On the other hand, the data companies gather through social media and use for marketing largely comes from the Global South — given its larger population.

AI projects “a single worldview,” noted Sasha Luccioni, a scientist who studied text-to-image AI bias and found prejudice in the gender and skin attributes prescribed. For example, when looking up “mujer inteligente” (intelligent woman) in Google Images, all of the first page results are young women of white and upper-class appearance. This bias is not limited to AI — Instagram influencers are more likely to be white and young, and a Dutch human rights institute recently found Facebook’s algorithm to have clear gender bias.

“Facebook doesn’t promote Indigenous rights or culture, but rather Western values,” Armando Gómez, a Mexican-Otomí cybersecurity specialist and activist with Laboratorio Popular de Medios Libres, told Truthout.

Google privileges sites with the most resources. “Now, search engines are like market lists of sellers … the first page of Google is at least a third sponsored spots, and after them, it’s private companies that have used marketing tools. It’s unequal, unfair, and a small hostel or town in Mexico can’t compete,” said Gómez.

Countries like Mexico struggle to access independent and quality content, because internet access is dependent on phones with preloaded apps like Facebook. In Mexico, 81 percent of people have access to smartphones, and just 44 percent of homes have a computer (including laptops or tablets), while in the U.S., 95 percent of homes have at least one computer, often more.

“We use these companies (like WhatsApp) to talk with our family, work, institutions. They are molding our minds, affecting our perception of the world,” Gómez noted.

Domingo, a founder of the Chiapas-based digital activist group, Sursiendo, who used only his first name for fear of reprisal, argued that Big Tech in Mexico is having a “cultural standardization effect, because everyone has Netflix, everyone orders through Amazon … these monopolies are promoting the American dream … people are dressing and behaving like the U.S., because what you see and consume through screens is what is cool. And that is a way of colonizing us, homogenizing cultures here in order to maximize profit.”

He said Uber and Didi were replacing local taxi businesses, and other U.S. companies like Airbnb and Booking are managing tourism. “Before, there was a tourism that was more local,” he said, adding that tourism in Chiapas “has adapted to Instagram, and the local government and companies install displays for Instagram photos, so the character of these places is lost in these photos, and tourism is now about consuming places very quickly.”

Testing Surveillance Out on Migrants

At Mexico’s northern border, Google is participating in a Customs and Border Patrol plan to use machine learning for surveillance. Meanwhile, at the southern border, Domingo said his group has been working with immigrant-rights coalition Migrar sin Vigilancia and found that Big Tech companies are “trying out new technologies for social control on migrants … and this is only going to get worse under Trump.”

Technology is being used “constantly to violate human rights” at Mexico’s southern border, he said. “No one notices what is happening there, and migrants are very vulnerable, so it is easy to use them as a testing ground for digital tools that are then employed elsewhere. … We are seeing more drones flying over (migrant) shelters or transit areas,” he said, noting it wasn’t clear if security forces or organized crime were using the drones.

Further, traffickers “use Facebook and Instagram to reach migrants,” he said, noting that because those companies are based in the U.S., it is difficult for the Mexican government to do anything.

While the European Commission recently fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200million for breaking rules on fair competition and user choice, it can be harder for Global South governments to stand up to Big Tech. IMF-imposed structural changes that weaken state institutions, a lack of resources to dedicate to creating and enforcing regulations, trade agreements that weaken state bodies, and other factors can make it harder for Global South countries to develop enforceable regulations. Gómez described how regulation is so weak in Latin America that they often depend on European regulations, “but while those are enforced or obligatory in Europe, here they are just a guide.”

Resistance and Alternatives

With the state increasingly unable to restrain Big Tech, digital activism becomes a necessity. And in Mexico, where land defenders are often threatened or disappeared, educating activists about digital security is vital. Gómez’s group is providing training in open source software and digital security, and using autonomous servers as a means for communities to be independent of Big Tech and control their data. He says his group has been working with “liberated technology for nine years now, and the impact has been very strong … we have 17 autonomous servers in a Latin American network, and we hope to bring in others and have 30 or 40 in the network within a year, providing our own services.”

In March, Gómez and his group visited and supported Indigenous Amazonian communities in Ecuador, “They have internet that they control, and in assemblies they filter it and decide which websites are allowed. They can prohibit Airbnb, pornography, violence. …It’s about being able to decide what the Internet is used for. There are also feminist, queer and ecologist servers for example, and they can decide their own rules about respect and collective care … so there are communities that are free of abuse.”

This week, the bodies of Mixe activist and lawyer Sandra Domínguez and her husband were found in Veracruz. Domínguez had denounced a WhatsApp group chat called Sierra XXX, where over 100 men, including Oaxacan politicians, shared intimate photos of Mixe women without their consent.

Mexico’s Olimpia law punishes such digital violence, but it’s not enough to prevent violations. For example, the First Latin American Summit of Women Digital Defenders held in Mexico this February was hit by a cyberattack mid-livestream, while presenters were critiquing the policies of Big Tech and discussing the Olimpia law. The hackers projected sexually explicit images.

Sanchez´s group is involved in the feminist server movement, “where a ton of women and dissidents, we work together to learn to create the types of services that Google offers (such as email, storage) and to agree on how we are going to manage our Internet.” That way, women and gender nonconforming people can set content and behavior rules that protect them from abuse or objectification, for example. Her group is also promoting open-source software, which she stresses should never be used to exploit anyone, and promoting “social technology … that involves good practices and better conditions for the users.”

Apart from working with migrant organizations, Domingo’s group also participates in various national and international digital activism networks, bringing to Chiapas their social issues and needs, while also bringing information about digital safety and technology to local spaces. “We work with organizations or collectives that want another type of Internet, without corporations, for the citizens, communities, the people,” he said.

Sursiendo, he explains, conducts research, provides training, helps groups “take care of themselves in the digital world” and promotes alternative technologies “so the Internet can be created collectively, rather than with an individualist vision.”

“How can technology be managed in such a way that the so-called sacrifice zones aren’t facing such dire consequences?” Sanchez asked. “It’s worth asking if there is a way of creating AI that is focused on social benefits, or, if, given the environmental and labor costs, AI is even necessary.”

The Big Tech billionaires are benefiting, “and the rest of the world isn’t, but ultimately, it’s about if these companies or platforms should exist at all,” she said.