"Big Tech almost demands our silence in exchange for the use of their services." PART 1: Interview with DJ Outvertigo

DJ Outvertigo, who created a playlist for the Take Back The Tech! Liveboard in 2024 around critical issues of surveillance, tech fascism and AI geopolitics joined us for a lively conversation centered around the curated resources in their playlist — here.

DJ Outvertigo is a Palestinian refugee researcher born and raised in Lebanon. She is researching surveillance in academia and anti-colonial knowledge production for my PHD. My work focuses on surveillance, tech fascism and AI geopolitics.

Her playlist offers a gathering of words, ideas, and images—fragments that have lit the way in moments of absolute apocalypse. When the world splits open, when it feels like there’s no ground left to stand on, these have been reminders that the only way is forward.

Palestine is a thread that pulls us together, no matter where we are, because it encompasses everything and summarizes our everyday struggle. Palestine means resistance, it means life refusing to be snuffed out. It means a determination to dream, to hold on, to fight for a better world for all.

This interview took place between Archismita (Take Back The Tech!) And DJ Outvertigo. All the links in this interview can be found collated in DJ Outvertigo’s playlist.

The interview will be published in three parts. This is Part 1.

Archismita: Thank you for joining us for this interview, DJ Outvertigo. The conversation today will be around your curated playlist, experiences in researching surveillance in academia, and anti-colonial knowledge production — as well as advocacy around critical issues of surveillance, tech fascism and AI geopolitics, all while centering the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to colonialism and genocide. We are so happy to have you with us.


DJ Outvertigo: Thank you, Archie. I’m happy to be here, and thank you so much for taking the time.

Archismita: My first question to you is — AI and tech have been used against civilians in Palestine for a long time now, with it being the “testing ground” for warfare technologies that are then eventually exported around the world. In this way, we are all connected — and in such a context, how can feminists and progressives participate in real, tangible ways towards the struggle for Palestinian self-determination? How can we resist the ways hegemonic forces move around in our spaces and minds?

DJ Outvertigo: I think the key term here is the idea of exporting, right? So although Palestine has been a testing ground — “export” is the key term here. Not just warfare technologies, but also logistical technologies and even in terms of infrastructure and the building of settlements, for example — these types of technologies also come under “export”. So, feminists and progressives from our movements need to engage in tangible and material ways and resist this. It would ultimately include alliance building and coalition building against the exporting of these technologies from a testing ground, and around the idea that although it springs from somewhere, it has affected so many of us, and so many leaders of our movements across the global South.

Whether through the spyware that has been tested on Palestinians, or through the checkpoint structure, or through the red wolf and blue wolf systems — which not only prevent people from living their lives normally, but is also about prediction. And according to me, this type of technology always predicts — how we’re going to fight or how we resist or how we move. And we’ve seen (check out the playlist here) that these technologies are not just being used within a region, but across the global South. In some contexts, it has been used against activists in the global North as well.

So this [alliance and coalition-building] is the only way left at this point. Not just build an alliance, but have a united front and objective both practically and strategically around this. As you’ve said, these hegemonic forces move around in our spaces and in our minds — it is also capable of demobilising us and making us feel as though nothing can change because it is often the case that tech is made abstract… and how do you fight an abstract idea? So the key element is understanding that it is the same everywhere, these tactics are used everywhere, and also for our resistance to be everywhere.

Archismita: You also covered the importance and use of striking — across corporations and demographics — to call attention to what is going on in the region. A few (or most?) times, this has led to retaliatory action and firings against employees, especially. It shows us that “resistance and solidarity are costly”, in your own words — and you also write the following: “our ads, our feeds, our curated lives — is complicit, a quiet co-conspirator in systems of oppression that demand silence as a form of allegiance.”

How do you think we can attempt to break out of that complicity, given that these systems have kept a lot of our daily functioning in a chokehold?

DJ Outvertigo: I think the main idea here is to also move away from the “politics of innocence”, or the politics of sort of saying that if we do one thing, then that means that we are not as complicit or we are not responsible for something happening. This is not only relevant for Palestine, but also for and in other contexts where the same technologies that we use is being employed to target and/or kill people. We assume, sort of, that just because it’s happening elsewhere or just because we have to use this technology, that it would make us — in a way — less complicit. Or even that — if we do this one thing, whatever it is and it might be symbolic, or an action, or anything else — then maybe we are not as complicit. This is just a way to move against a call of action that states urgency based on one case.

This is why I was thinking about how everything we do is sort of tied to this technology, either through work or just by existing in today’s world. It’s as though simply existing today already pulls us in and makes us complicit in it even if we refuse to.

We also have to engage with the surveillance systems around us, even when we may not be aware of it sometimes.

Whether it’s border security, whether it’s crossing the streets, whether it’s in our cars — you know, it’s everywhere. So the idea is that breaking out of this complicity does not necessarily mean that we want to pull the plug — although that would be a great dream, but it’s not about that. It’s also about sort of understanding that what this ever-present and ever-pervasive technology, or more accurately the companies that make this technology, assume or expect is that just because we are so dependent on their services — that of course we have to be silent about what happens in other contexts, or what happens to people who are not us, or people who also actually use the same technology (and are targeted because of that).

It’s just about the idea that if we are all complicit, then we cannot all be silent at the same time. It’s like we have to choose one category, and I think it’s also about how Big Tech almost demands our silence in exchange for the use of their services. There has been a lot written on how we exchange privacy to get services — like tech services, access to the internet, or access to different software or social media tools.

Privacy was the currency, but now we’re saying that the currency is actually active murder of other people.

So now we’re exchanging not just privacy — it’s almost like the tech is taking unilateral decisions in this exchange and we just have to accept it. We just have to be, or need to be, so hyped up about all of this new technology without questioning what is happening in the background. What is the deal that is sometimes quite literally made with blood? What has led us to this moment of celebration of a new technology?

It’s not just about breaking off. It’s also about understanding what we’re selling and at what expense does our engagement with these technologies arrive.

It’s just about the first step to name it and understand it fully to even start imagining how to break out of it because they know that when we depend on their services, there is no way we can speak up. It’s similar to how people used to tell each other, “You cannot be a marxist if you own an iPhone.”

Now it’s like you can’t speak against surveillance if you have a biometric passport. It’s the same sort of strategy being used again and again.

Interviewer’s note: As posted by the No Azure For Apartheid campaign, a coalition of Microsoft workers demanding that Microsoft terminate all Azure contracts and partnerships with the Israeli military and government, at the beginning of March 2025 — five Microsoft workers asked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella a question - “Does Our Code Kill Kids, Satya?” during an Employee Town Hall at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond. Despite standing silently with their question spelled out on shirts - the workers were quickly removed by security and barred from re-entering their own town hall event.

Senior leadership refused to take live employee questions at this employee town hall, and continues to “remain silent or deflect when asked in internal platforms and at leadership AMAs to respond to worker concerns about recent reporting of Microsoft’s extensive role in Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians”. The campaign added that, “Microsoft workers everywhere have expressed that they did not sign up to work at a weapons company - and do not consent for their labor to write code that kills.

Microsoft executives are active conspirators in Israel's genocide of Palestinians. As a worker-led campaign, we refuse to accept silence as an answer as Microsoft continues to profit from genocide. We call upon workers, students, community organizers, and all people of conscience to join us in holding Microsoft accountable.”