29 May 2026
From Wikipedia and open government data to Mastodon and the Fediverse, Everton Zanella Alvarenga has spent years working at the intersection of technology and public life. Here, he reflects on why he launched Leave X, why he believes politics depends on dialogue, and why the future of democracy may depend on breaking big tech’s grip on the public square.
Nica: It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Nica. In my everyday life, I’m an anthropology professor. I also work with Edgeryders on topics we think are socially important. My main research field is environmental anthropology: climate change, natural resources, and the politics around them. I’d like to ask you a series of open-ended questions and have a somewhat guided discussion. I’d love to hear about your experience, expertise, and thoughts on these topics. Do you have any questions before we get started?
Everton: Yes. If I understood correctly, you’re going to ask questions about the Leave X Protect Democracy project, right?
Nica: Yes. I usually like to start with questions about the person and how they got involved. I may also ask broader questions, for example about the intersection of civil society and technology. But you’re very welcome to answer in the context of Leave X, because that’s your main area of experience here. How does that sound?
Everton: That’s fine. It’s a side project. I’m Everton. I’m from São Paulo, but I’ve been living in Berlin for a bit more than nine years. I work as a software engineer at the intersection of open source, public-interest technology, and civic tech. My current job is in the digitalization of the German government for a company from Düsseldorf, where I work as a business intelligence and open data expert.
Over the years, I’ve contributed to several projects in the open source and open knowledge world. I worked with the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, and I managed an educational program involving universities in Brazil to improve the Portuguese Wikipedia. I was also involved in the open data scene and with the Open Knowledge Foundation. I helped bring its local chapter to Brazil, which later became the legal representative of the Open Knowledge Foundation there.
That was before I moved to Europe. After coming here, I returned to software development, always working with open source technologies.
One of my main concerns today is disinformation campaigns that are influencing democracies around the world, whether through fake news websites or social media platforms, especially those run by big tech. A few weeks ago I went to FOSDEM, the open source conference in Brussels, for the first time.
Nica: That’s where you met the colleagues from Edgeryders, right?
Everton: Exactly. I attended one of the panels about the Fediverse, the federated universe of interoperable social media technologies. I use Mastodon a lot, but also Pixelfed and other platforms. I also attended a presentation by Björn Staschen, who leads Save Social here in Germany. They’re encouraging people to use the Fediverse too.
My own project is focused on politicians and on encouraging them to leave X. That’s where I wanted to concentrate my efforts. About a year ago, in January, I wrote an open letter to European politicians explaining why they should leave the platform. For me, it is now very clear that there is an agenda being pushed there under Elon Musk’s leadership, and I find that deeply problematic.
What happens on that platform is seen by millions of people. One of my biggest concerns is that it is still constantly used as a reference by media outlets. Even outlets that say they are no longer using X still have to follow what public representatives are saying there. That means many journalists remain on X, and I think that is very problematic.
Nica: That’s really helpful context. Later I’d like to ask more about what first led you into civic engagement through technology. But first, as Bojan probably mentioned, the larger project we’re working on is called INTERFACED*.
The technical definition of an interface is the point where two systems or structures meet or align. Among the researchers on this project, we spend a lot of time debating what an interface really is. From your perspective, when I say the word interface, especially in the context of democratic participation and political engagement, what does it mean to you?*
Everton: I saw that there is a Discourse forum about INTERFACED on Edgeryders, and I understand it is project that also coveres the pandemic.
Nica: That’s right. This is really about the project itself, which is not the only thing Edgeryders does. The idea was to think about where, in both the real and digital worlds, people interact with power, where ordinary people interact with politicians or political systems in ways other than just voting. Digital choices, including choices about which platforms to use, are part of that. So if we think of an interface as the point where two things interact, whether systems or people, what kinds of interfaces allow people to interact with power or politics?
Everton: I got involved in this area around 2006. A bit of background: my academic background is in physics. I studied particle physics, especially neutrino physics. In 2006 I started working as a web developer for the University of São Paulo, where we were creating a social network platform to share educational and scientific knowledge.
The University of São Paulo is huge — more than 100,000 active people, and more than half a million if you count alumni. It’s one of the biggest universities in South America. The idea was to share knowledge, but in parallel I also got involved with what we then called Web 2.0, this more interactive internet.
At that time I was following people like Lawrence Lessig.
Nica: I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know much more.
Everton: He is a professor from Harvard. He created things like Creative Commons. Before Obama was elected, Lessig was building a movement in the US called Change Congress. I was very influenced by him. I read Free Culture, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Code 2.0, and so on.
I was also watching what the Sunlight Foundation was doing in the US: building apps through which people could influence politics. In Europe there were similar examples. In the UK there was TheyWorkForYou, where citizens could interact with representatives, follow debates, and see parliamentary questions.
That really interested me. In my spare time I started thinking about how these emerging technologies, Twitter, microblogging, blogs, could be used politically. In Brazil there was a project called Adopt a City Councilman or Adopt a City Councilwoman. The idea, promoted by a well-known radio host in São Paulo, was that you would “adopt” a local representative. That meant following their work, blogging about what they were saying and doing, reporting on it, and contacting them directly.
You would call them, send emails, follow them on Twitter. That was fascinating to me because I started interacting with a politician I had voted for, someone who said he wanted to use the internet more in politics, which was one of the reasons I chose him. He was also involved in education. That’s when I really became interested in how technology could be used to change policies and solve problems.
In 2009 I gave a presentation in Brazil, organized by W3C Brazil, called Is the Government Prepared for Web 2.0? At the time I was involved in a Brazilian community called Transparência Hacker, or Hackers for Transparency. It brought together developers, journalists, sociologists, and many other people with different skills, all trying to use technology to influence government or solve social problems.
Nica: Interesting.
Everton: What I saw then, both in Brazil and in projects in Europe and the US, was that we were creating something important. Sometimes it was an app for following a politician. Sometimes it was a platform for replying to them or seeing what they replied, like the UK one. But I also started asking: how will these projects be funded? They need resources if they are going to continue.
After some years working as a developer, I decided in 2011 to backpack through Europe in search of ideas I could bring back to Brazil. I visited 12 countries, including part of the Middle East. At that time I was also studying some Arabic. This was before the war in Syria.
I went to conferences, met people from the French government, NGOs, and activist circles. I attended the Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin, where I now live. I really liked the Open Knowledge approach. I was already doing volunteer work, and I thought it made sense to bring that model to Brazil because it connected with everything I cared about: access to educational knowledge, scientific knowledge, and governmental knowledge through open government data.
Nica: That sounds like a great project.
Everton: After that trip, I proposed creating Open Knowledge in Brazil. It was an intense journey, 12 countries in three months.
I also went to Israel for Wikimania, the Wikimedia Foundation conference, and then to Palestine, in the West Bank. After I came back to Brazil, I was invited to the Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw, in October 2011, to speak about how civil society was influencing open data policies in Brazil.
At that point I was already talking to politicians. We were trying to pass an access-to-information law in Brazil, similar to FOIA in the United States, and I was also trying to help build an open government data policy. All of that was still happening in my spare time.
After my talk in Warsaw, Open Knowledge invited me to work part-time as the local coordinator in Brazil. Later I also began working for the Wikimedia Foundation. So I ended up working for the two organizations I had originally joined as a volunteer.
As I mentioned, I managed the Wikipedia Education Program in Brazil. I was working half-time for Wikimedia and half-time for Open Knowledge. Both projects grew significantly in Brazil, especially at the national level. After two years, we realized it was time to formally found an NGO for Open Knowledge in Brazil, with a legal structure, bylaws, and the capacity to grow and raise funding. Eventually the organization was founded, with support from several people locally and from the international organization as well.
Nica: That’s a striking trajectory. It also makes clear that democracy is not just voting; it’s a process. Over the last five years in particular, what role have technological platforms come to play in that process? And how does that compare with more traditional forms of participation, like voting?
Everton: At the beginning of what we called Web 2.0, things were different. We didn’t yet have this algorithm-driven social media run by big tech. People were using asynchronous communication, writing blogs, replying to one another, and engaging in what really felt like a public square. Twitter in the beginning felt like that. It wasn’t pushing a constant stream of accelerated content into your face with advertising and manipulative algorithms like it does now.
Things changed. We had moments like the Arab Spring, where Twitter seemed to be enabling democratic action. But over time these technologies ended up in the hands of very few people. That, for me, is the core problem.
It’s also why, when I was helping build that social network at the University of São Paulo, the idea was that it should be decentralized. Facebook, for example, started in one university, but it grew into a platform with billions of users. Now we see Meta being taken to court in the US over the harm it causes to young people, and not only young people. The whole model is about monetizing through polarization, hate speech, and particular agendas. That is one of the biggest changes of recent years.
So yes, a lot has changed. The more data we give these companies, the more they learn how to influence us.
Nica: In the movements, platforms, and communities you’ve been involved in, how did that dynamic play out during Covid, when much of the world moved online, but people were also more isolated?
Everton: Covid happened in a moment when, from my perspective, we already had far-right governments. In Brazil, Bolsonaro had been elected in 2018, which was something I could never have imagined. Disinformation in Brazil spread heavily through WhatsApp, as well as through social media more broadly. In the US, Trump had already been elected before Bolsonaro — and Bolsonaro is in many ways a copy of Trump.
These two cases show how skilled the far right has become at using social media in an interconnected world where people are addicted to their phones, their apps, Instagram, Facebook, and X. It really is addiction, and not only for children. Adults too. The algorithms are built around polarization. They want people engaged. They want that dopamine hit from likes and shares.
During the pandemic, all of this intensified. It was happening alongside developments in Brazil and the US, but the trend started earlier. I remember moving to Europe in 2016, and then at the end of 2017 I saw a Bloomberg chart showing the rise of the far right across Europe. It was very striking. Then Bolsonaro was elected.
I’m currently reading How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. In fact, one of the incentives in my Leave X campaign is that I give books to politicians who persuade their peers to leave the platform. So far I have received responses from some Members of the European Parliament, and some of them have been very supportive. Some even left X because people used my tool to email them.
This is all still something I do in my spare time, so I can’t push constantly. And I don’t want to flood politicians’ inboxes. I want dialogue. For me, politics is based on dialogue.
The problem is that these social media platforms thrive on controversy, anger, conflict, and polarization. That is how they survive. They need people to stay on the platform, they need to grow, and they need attention because attention means advertising revenue.
So yes, during the pandemic, when people were bored and isolated, that probably made everything worse. People thought: how can I interact with others? And they kept scrolling. Meanwhile the algorithms were becoming even more effective at triggering people.
Nica: So what is the most effective way for people to participate democratically now? Is it to build alternative platforms insulated from those algorithms? Or to step away from screens and invest more in in-person civic life? Or something in between?
Everton: If you go to the Leave X website, you’ll see that I translated a Netzpolitik article from German. Netzpolitik is a very well-known technology publication in Germany. The article argues that the idea that you have to stay on social networks in order to oppose them makes no sense.
The argument is simple: once you stay on these platforms, which are built to monetize polarization, anger, hate speech, and controversy, you are giving them your data and your time. And that strategy does not work.
Some people say, “But I have to stay there to debate and counterargue.” In practice, it is ineffective. Studies discussed by Netzpolitik looked at interactions on X and found huge numbers of bots and very little genuinely productive discussion.
That goes to the heart of my position. Politics involves disagreement, but we have to remain capable of disagreeing while still reaching some form of consensus. One of the arguments in How Democracies Die is that democracies break down when political opponents stop seeing each other as opponents and start seeing each other as enemies. The authors discuss this in relation to several historical cases, including Hitler and Mussolini, and it is very relevant to Brazil as well.
The book came out in 2018, the year Bolsonaro was elected, and it explains very clearly how, in Brazil, the Workers’ Party and the PSDB reached a point where they were treating one another as enemies. That is exactly the point where dialogue collapses. But politics has to be about dialogue. Sometimes the other group is going to win. That is part of democracy.
What we see now, in the US for example, is Republicans and Democrats hating each other, with almost no dialogue left. I see that same pattern reflected in social media. Just yesterday, on one of these platforms, the one I consider worst because of its algorithm, someone blocked me simply because I expressed an opinion they disagreed with.
Nica: When I look at Leave X, I also see references to Mastodon, open portability, and concrete European alternatives. So is the answer to create alternative digital spaces, or to reject digital platforms and reinvest in offline activism?
Everton: First, we already have alternatives. In Europe there is a growing movement to boycott, or at least reduce dependence on, American technology and use European solutions instead. Europe is still deeply dependent on American infrastructure, not only social media, but also data centers, email systems like Google, and other core technologies.
Mastodon, for instance, is a microblogging platform that can do what X does, but without the same dynamics of addiction and polarization. It is decentralized. That means we can have an interoperable web. If someone prefers something more like Instagram for photos, there is Pixelfed.
So yes, we already have alternatives. The problem is that millions of people still use the big tech platforms, and those platforms are doing a lot of harm. We need alternatives that are not driven by profit, because profit is the core logic of those companies. You could see that even symbolically at Trump’s inauguration, with big tech figures from Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others standing there.
Nica: But how do you see these platforms in relation to offline engagement? Do they replace it, or complement it?
Everton: I think they can complement it. Even before big tech became so dominant, people were already using digital tools in useful ways. In the Adopt a City Councilman project, for example, I used blogs, emails, and other digital tools to monitor representatives and communicate with them.
But we also had support from the media. A well-known radio host was helping amplify what we were doing: these people are blogging about what this politician is voting on, whether it’s a health insurance law or something else. Journalism matters here. The media has to help strengthen alternatives.
And when people talk about “the real world” as opposed to the digital world, I disagree with that distinction. For me, the digital world is the real world.
We are speaking right now: you are in New York, I am in Berlin, and this conversation is happening online. But it is still real. You are a real person, I am a real person, we have ideas and projects, and we are exchanging them. You are recording this, and other people may watch it later. That is real life.
And you can see how these dynamics work politically. Recently I saw that Paula Simons, a senator in Canada, was asking why the Canadian prime minister had not left X. And yesterday John Oliver published something, it already had almost three million views, explaining how harmful X is. And in the conclusion, he says: just leave X. That is the reasoning.
Imagine if all politicians, or even just all Members of the European Parliament, left X at the same time and said, “Let’s move to Mastodon.” In the European Parliament there are 719 members, and at the moment 420 of them are still on X — about 58 percent.
If they all left, journalists would immediately ask: where did these representatives go? That has a social effect. Look at Trump. When he was blocked on Twitter, he moved to Truth Social, which is essentially a fork of Mastodon, a Mastodon instance. And journalists quote him there all the time.
That is why I think leaving together weakens the lock-in effect of the current system. If politicians keep speaking on big tech platforms and then their posts are constantly repeated by major media outlets, that becomes real life. Media is real life too.
Nica: Do people involved in Leave X disagree internally about tactics, strategies, framing, or goals?
Everton: Honestly, I’m doing the project almost alone.
I wrote the open letter myself. There was also a petition last year, and about 3,000 people signed it. Many sent supportive messages saying it was great that someone had written this open letter to European politicians.
One thing I was especially proud of happened about a month ago. I added statistics about politicians and created a tool that lets people contact them by email very easily. I started with Members of the European Parliament. You can select a country, Croatia, for example, and see how many representatives are on X and how many are not. Then you can copy the email addresses of those still on X and write to them asking why they are still there.
People started doing exactly that. Then politicians began contacting me saying, “Why are people writing to me? Please, I’m not there anymore.” So they removed themselves because of social pressure. That means the tool is having a real effect.
People have also contributed data from their own countries. Some people from the Netherlands, Austria, and Sweden sent information about which politicians in their countries were still on X. The project is open source, which is very important to me, and people are contributing to it.
There was also an initiative called Elbows Up Digital, which said it was inspired by Leave X. They built a similar tool. It uses different software, but the interface is very similar. That made me really happy, because suddenly people in Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada were all saying: we have the same goal, we want a healthier public square.
And to think that this all started just over a year ago in Berlin, while I was walking my dog. She is basically my team. Sometimes we disagree, because she wants to go one way and I want to go the other, and I tell her, “No, no, I have to go back to work.” That’s the disagreement I have.
But really, it’s been inspiring to watch the idea spread. A senator in Canada mentioned the project. For me, that was huge. It feels like it is reaching the point I hoped it could reach.
I’m going to Paris on vacation for a week, and I may print the letter there. It has been translated into several languages. I used DeepL first and then volunteers reviewed the translations. The Polish version is good, the Spanish version is good, and so on. I speak some German, but not well enough to know whether the German text is perfect, so other people reviewed that too.
Nica: Are the people translating and reviewing it volunteers?
Everton: Yes, everything is volunteer-based.
Nica: How does that happen in practice? Who decides to review the Polish version, for example?
Everton: In the last month, Leave X has grown its social media following quite a bit. We now have around 2,000 followers on Mastodon, about 1,100 on Bluesky, and around 200 on Pixelfed, roughly 3,300 in total. I post news there regularly. For example, I posted the article about why staying on X makes no sense, and that alone got more than 40 shares in a single day.
Recently I also shared a Nature paper reporting on an experiment that showed how users of X shift their opinions over time: they start following conservative or extremist profiles and their political views change. That is a concrete effect in real life. And because it was Nature, a serious research, that post was shared more than 100 times.
Of course, this is not the same scale you get on big tech platforms where some people have millions of followers. But there are other forms of impact. At FOSDEM in Brussels, for example, I met someone involved in Save Social here in Germany, based in Hamburg. We had been trying to meet for some time and finally managed it there. We talked about all these ideas. That was also when I met Bojan, because both of us were going to talk with Björn. This too is real life. This is politics. This is influencing politics.
Nica: Let me end with a final question. Overall, do you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about the future of democratic participation?
Everton: The big problem is dependence on the United States. From what I’m reading, in How Democracies Die, and in a very good Der Spiegel interview with a historian whose name I can’t recall, if the US de facto becomes an autocratic state, if democracy dies there, then the consequences will be enormous.
We are still too dependent on American technology. But alternatives do exist. And when people see what an authoritarian regime could do, for example, if Trump were able to access someone’s Microsoft email here in Europe, they begin to understand the risks more clearly.
I still believe change is possible. That’s why I continue working on the project in my spare time. I was sick for the last two weeks, so I couldn’t update things as much as I wanted. But I hope we can build a community, and in fact one is already forming. There are people in Canada and in other countries who are getting involved, and hopefully more will join.
The key point is this: politicians are our representatives. We voted for them. We pay them with our taxes. I can’t tell an ordinary person, “Please leave X because it is bullshit,” because I don’t really have power over that person. But with politicians, I do have some power. I vote for them and help pay their salaries. That’s why my strategy focuses on politicians rather than journalists.
Journalists are in a similar bind. They say they need to stay because they have to follow politicians. And politicians, like many people, want to be seen and heard. They want likes, visibility, attention, votes. So naturally they stay where the majority is.
But that is exactly why pressure matters. If we tell them, “We do not want the public square to remain in this unhealthy place. Let’s move somewhere else,” then change can happen. It is already happening, although slowly.
I do believe it can happen. But I am also fearful about the future of our democracies, mainly because of disinformation campaigns. Leave X focuses on one platform, but the problem is broader: TikTok, Meta, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and others all play a role.
There is also a very good New York Times podcast, Rabbit Hole, which shows how YouTube’s algorithms can also push people toward particular agendas. But my main concern remains disinformation campaigns in this interconnected world, and the growth of the far right that is threatening our democracies.
Nica: That makes sense. Thank you so much. This has been full of valuable information and insight. I had read about Leave X beforehand, but I feel I understand much more now — both how you got involved and the broader ideas behind it. Before we wrap up, do you have any questions for me?
Everton: Just one: where is this going to be published, and will I have access to the video?
Nica: Yes, of course. As soon as the video is ready — it takes a little while to render — we’ll share access with you, probably within a day or two. As for publication, the interviews are published on Edgeryders, on the public platform. Because this is a publicly funded project, the material is public. If you have any concerns about that, you can let us know.
Everton: No, I don’t have any concerns.
Nica: Great.
Everton: I’ll just wait until you tell me it’s published. If I receive the video, I don’t want to post it before you do, because it’s also your work. Once it’s published, I can share a link to your platform as well.
Nica: That would be wonderful. I think there is probably a lot of overlap between people interested in your work and people who might be interested in Edgeryders, since it’s an open-source kind of digital commons. So if you share it later, some of your audience may well want to join the conversation there.
Thank you so much, Everton. I really appreciate your time. And since it’s evening in Europe, have a great evening.
Everton: Thank you. Have a good day. Bye-bye. Ciao.
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