It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Five companies own your digital life. They track every click. They mine your conversations and sell you back to yourself as an advertising demographic. You need a subscription to read your fucking email. A thousand dollar phone just to stay connected. Mountains of e-waste, because they designed your devices to die.
But here we are.
We started the Anti-Capitalist Computer Club because we remember when computing felt different. When you could fix your own machine. When software was something you owned, not rented. When your data was yours, not a commodity. When the internet was still weird and open and made by people like us.
That version of computing isn't gone.
It's just been buried under venture capital and marketing departments.
We're graverobbing its corpse and resurrecting it.
Technology should liberate, not surveil. It should extend the commons, not enclose them.
Every locked device is a taking. Every walled garden. Every forced upgrade. They're taking your autonomy, your privacy, your right to fix what you own.
We're here to take it back.
We teach people to switch to Signal because your conversations shouldn't be product research. We help folks install Linux because your computers should work for you, not shareholders who are oppressively trying to cram AI into every nook and cranny of your life. We jailbreak Kindles because you should own the things that you buy. We show people how to set up a Pi-hole because Big Tech shouldn't be fracking your home network for data.
This is digital self-defense.
Opting out of surveillance capitalism one app, one device at a time.
Every device we keep running breaks their business model.
Every open operating system we install on an old machine is a middle finger to the upgrade cycle.
Every tracker we block is a tiny act of rebellion against the attention economy.
We're not selling anything. We're not even really providing services. We're doing mutual aid. Because in Bakersfield, and across the Central Valley, people deserve to control their technology without being upsold, tracked, data mined, or abandoned when the next model drops.
You don't need to know what an OPML file or RSS feed is. You don't need to start compiling your apps from source. You don't need strong opinions about window managers.
You just need to be tired of tech companies treating you like the product.
We'll meet you where you are. Maybe today that's just getting an ad blocker installed. Next month, it might be learning about the Fediverse, an alternative to traditional social media. A year from now, you might be helping someone else set up OpenWRT on their router.
That's how this works. We all learn together.
Anti-Fascist: Technology is a tool. We don't provide tools to fascists. Period.
Feminist: The tech world has always had a women problem. We're actively hostile to that tradition. Harassment and misogyny get you shown the door.
Queer Liberation: We're building spaces where queer folks are safe, supported, and amplified.
Accessible: If you can't understand our explanations, that's on us, not you. No gatekeeping.
Sustainable: Permacomputing isn't just an aesthetic. It's about using less energy, keeping devices alive longer, and questioning whether we need the newest thing.
We don't work with law enforcement.
We don't provide services to organizations built on exploitation.
We're not interested in being neutral about people's right to exist.
If that's a problem for you, there are plenty of other tech support options in town.
We show up at the Really Really Free Market with our phones and our laptops and our knowledge. We help people install ad blockers, switch to privacy-focused browsers, set up password managers, migrate to Signal. We talk about open source operating systems like GrapheneOS and Linux. We help people spot scams.
We explain why your phone is slow and what you can do about it.
Sometimes we set up a Pi-hole. Sometimes we jailbreak a Kindle. Sometimes we just listen to someone explain what they need and help them figure out the next step.
We're not consultants. We're not gurus. We may not have the answers you need. We're just people who know some stuff about computers and believe that knowledge should be shared freely.
The Anti-Capitalist Computer Club is whatever we make it. We started in November 2025 with two people at the Really Really Free Market. Six months later there's a small crew of us, with new faces showing up at every meeting.
Tomorrow it might be repair workshops. A tool library. A mesh network.
We're figuring it out as we go, the same way the internet was figured out before the VCs showed up.
If you're reading this and thinking "I could help with that!" Great. You're already part of it.
That's not a slogan. That's the deal.
We don't charge. We don't upsell. We don't have a premium tier.
Technology is infrastructure. It should be free like libraries are free. Like water should be free. Like knowledge has always been free.
We're building our little corner of the internet, as a community that we actually want to live in.
Want to know when we're meeting up or what we're working on? Drop your email and we'll keep you posted.
Dagny's, first Wednesday of every month, 6 to 8pm. The Really Really Free Market, usually the third Sunday of every month, 9 to 11am. Show up. Say hi.
We're a bunch of folks in Bakersfield doing free mutual aid tech support. We help people escape surveillance capitalism, install privacy tools, keep old devices running, and take back control of their digital lives. No fees. No upsells. No data mining. Just neighbors helping neighbors opt out of the bullshit.
A tool we built to help us find Flock cameras around Bakersfield. Spot one? Pull up birdwatch.makersfield.co on your phone and tap the button. We verify every sighting and add confirmed cameras to the national DeFlock map.
Like a photo walk, but in reverse. Once a month we walk a stretch of Bakersfield together and document every Flock Safety camera we find. The city won't tell us where they are, so we go look. More about why we do this.
A browser extension we built that catches Substack URLs before they load and redirects them to an archive instead. Substack lines its pockets with a cut of every paying fascist newsletter subscription on its platform. The extension lets you read an article you were linked without putting a dime in their pocket. Grab it on GitHub.
Yes. If you're doing care work or organizing in the Central Valley, come find us at Dagny's or the RRFM. We can help you think through your operational security: what's leaking, what to lock down, how to keep your members safer.
No. It feels counter to our whole mission to be on a platform that's fracking your behavioral data to sell you crud. We do have a newsletter though. Consider signing up! We'll be respectful of your inbox and keep the volume low. Promise.
Show up to one of our meetings and hang out. That's it. We've got a Signal group for folks who want to keep in touch between meetings, but to get added you have to meet us in person at the RRFM or at Dagny's first.
A list of tech things we like and think are useful. Your mileage on individual resources may vary. This is not an exhaustive list. Some of these things we made, wrote, or gathered ourselves, and we disclose that. Nobody is paying us to shill their stuff. And everything we share is free to use.
A free and open source (FOSS) password manager that consistently ranks as one of the best out there. If you're looking to get organized and/or deGoogle, transferring from Google password manager to Bitwarden might be worth your time.
Not great for collaboration, but an alternative to Google Drive for your personal docs.
A whole suite of handy tools (QR code generator, image background remover, and more) that you can use without getting your data harvested.
FOSS fork of Firefox that focuses on privacy and security, and has remained staunchly against all the AI bullshit — removing the AI additions that Firefox added in late 2025.
Alternative to Google's search engine. We're still fucking around with alternative search engines, but we like this one for its privacy (EU hosted), its price point (free), and its search index and results ranking.
Collaborative document software alternative to OneDrive or Google Drive. This is what we use to draft our materials.
A browser extension that automatically redirects Substack articles to an archiving service of your choice, including articles on custom domains.
Spot a Flock camera around Bakersfield? Pull this up on your phone and tap the button. We verify every sighting and add confirmed cameras to the national map.
Our campaign hub to end the Bakersfield Police Department's 133-camera Flock Safety surveillance network. Everything we've dug up, the tools we've built, and how you can help.
The original 13-document CPRA response: BPD's Flock contracts, order forms, invoices, and the state grant records that show how the deployment got funded.
17 more documents, including BPD's official ALPR policy manual and the city's written denial of camera location disclosure. Also confirms in writing: no annual audit reports exist.
1.4 million individual license plate searches logged from October 2021 through February 2026: officer names, plates queried, dates, case numbers, and stated reasons for each search.
Want to remove your personal info from data broker sites but don't want to pay for a service like DeleteMe? This list lets you DIY that shit. Especially appreciated is the priority ranking of which sites to hit first, and the step-by-step walkthroughs of how to do it. These sites don't make it easy because they want to keep your information.
Figuring out where to start with privacy and security can be really overwhelming. This quiz helps sort your priorities and ranks important tasks for you to feel good about completing.