deFAANG big tech is a project to curate the primary source, public documents of major technology companies.

These include patent applications and US SEC filings, recordings provided by public interest media organization C-SPAN, and the companies’ own Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policies.

deFAANG big tech responds to the information asymmetry between these companies and us, their users / consumers / products / raw materials, by revealing the open source intelligence that is hidden in plain sight.

To maximize technology’s benefits while negating or mitigating its harms, we first need to understand how it works, and for whom.

deFAANG big tech is a sister project to the Digital Shred Privacy Literacy Toolkit and a labor of love for librarian Sarah Hartman-Caverly, who still believes that knowledge is power.

DeFAANG refers to the FAANG tech stocks: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (now Alphabet). Also included are other publicly-traded technology companies with significant influence in policy, culture, and society, such as Twitter and Uber.

DeFAANG is a double entendre of defang, which means “to make something less harmful, so that it is no longer dangerous.”

This Latin phrase, translated as “Who can watch the watchers?,” is attributed to Roman satirist Juvenal (World Heritage Encyclopedia via Project Gutenberg).

It is often used as a warning about the tyrannical tendencies of concentrated power to oppress and control others.

It describes a defiant posture of sousveillance that resists the temptation to throw up one’s hands and accept the Terms and Conditions as they are.

Who watches the watchers? We do.

Vision by IconMark from Noun Project.