It’s no secret that our news and information sources have become overwhelmingly controlled by a handful of powerful corporations. These tech giants make their fortunes by monetizing your data, tracking your every click, and crafting search algorithms that shape how you see the world. In the process, your privacy vanishes, and your choices shrink. But what if it didn’t have to be this way? A new player, Freespoke, is offering an alternative, taking a stand against Big Tech with a bold vision for a fairer, more private internet.
Freespoke is one company offering solutions to these problems and pioneering a path away from Big Tech/Google’s monopoly on information. Return sat down with Kristin Jackson of Freespoke to discuss her company’s solutions to these problems in today’s online information environment.
'Every dictator in our history has known that if they can control information, they can control their people.'
The people at Freespoke noticed a considerable amount of media bias in mainstream search engines like Google. It is most likely impossible to eradicate this issue, so Freespoke does the next best thing: It labels media bias while also highlighting “multiple viewpoints.” Freespoke labels content “left, right, and middle,” but it also has alternative labels such as a “faith label” and an “independent label.” Freespoke seeks to level the media bias when you search for your news: “We've added an element to make sure you're getting different viewpoints in your search results.”
It also makes it easy to find controversial topics on the search engine since the developers know that those topics may be the most skewed to one point of view. For example, they've made it very easy to find stories surrounding elections: “We focus [on election information] because we know election-related information is an area where people aren't sure Google is telling them the full story.”
Another hallmark of Freespoke is that it “prioritizes American-made businesses” to give it a chance to fight against its biggest competitors. The developers want to support “that American ideal of a small business owner being the backbone of an economy.” They see this as a key to revitalizing the American economy from the bottom up: “We don't have strong national supply chains because we just haven't been supporting our small business owners and haven't been making sure they can get in front of a population and sell their goods.” This part of the search engine is beneficial for bringing American businesses to more people’s attention.
That’s not all Freespoke has to offer. It is also a pornography-free search engine, making it safe for all ages. Jackson said they weren’t initially sure how they would make this a reality, but then they just decided, “Let's just not show pornography.” From “day one,” they did not have porn on their search engine.
While these are all great search engine features, Freespoke “built a search engine based on privacy.” Privacy was the defining element of their vision for an alternative search engine.
“I will tell you that as a company, we believe protecting your privacy is important to you — it’s important to us and should be important to you. And in Freespoke, you can know from day one, as long as we exist, that we are going to stand by that principle of protecting your privacy.”
What sets Freespoke apart from other third-party search engines that offer privacy? Not only is it fully committed to protecting your privacy, but it also offers a bias labeling service that provides a more even playing field (not to mention being porn-free and emphasizing American companies). You get the best of both worlds with its service, as the website says: “Freespoke is here to show you what other search engines won’t and protect your privacy in ways they refuse.”
Freespoke is offering an alternative vision for the future of search engines. It must offer bias labeling and data protection since both issues are important to address in today’s media environment. There is also a more pressing issue that the developers are trying to combat. Freespoke understands what happens when one person or group controls the information for a person, and it never ends well:
“Every dictator in our history has known that if they can control information, they can control their people. And so we have to make sure one organization does not control our information.”
