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Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Aug 10, 2025 • 16 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

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Every time you push code to GitHub for free, Microsoft makes money.

Every React component you build, Meta profits.

Every TensorFlow model you train, Google cashes in.

You're not a developer - you're an unpaid employee of Big Tech 🧵

The numbers are staggering.

Recreating all existing open source software would cost $8.8 trillion.

Yet who maintains it?

Mostly unpaid volunteers working nights and weekends.

Meanwhile, Google pulls $200+ billion annually built on Linux, TensorFlow, and thousands of free projects.

Here's the con: 70% of open source contributions come from individuals and volunteers.

Big Tech contributes strategically - just enough to control direction, never enough to match what they extract.

They're not partners. They're parasites with billion-dollar PR budgets.

React powers millions of apps.

Built by community, controlled by Meta.

Kubernetes runs the cloud economy - billions for AWS and Azure.

GitHub Copilot?

Trained on your free code, sold back to you for $10/month.

They're literally monetizing your unpaid work.

The patent trap is worse.

Companies file thousands of software patents on open source derivatives.

NVIDIA patents OSS-published software.

OpenAI stopped open-sourcing after GPT-2, then patents the tech.

They take your free work, lock it up, charge you to use it.

Meet the victims: "My open source code is worth millions, but I live paycheck to paycheck."

Maintainers burn out, quit, leave critical infrastructure vulnerable.

Remember Log4j?

One unpaid developer's library nearly broke the internet when hackers exploited it.

The H1B scam makes it worse.

Big Tech uses open source to suppress wages, replacing American developers with cheaper labor.

"Why pay $150k when someone in Bangalore will contribute for free?"

It's wage theft disguised as globalization.

GitHub Copilot is the smoking gun.

Microsoft trained it on billions of lines of code without paying creators a cent.

Now they sell AI generated from YOUR work back to YOU.

It's digital colonialism - extract resources, sell refined products.

OpenAI's the worst offender.

ChatGPT trained on uncompensated data from millions of creators.

Kenyan workers earn $1-2/hour labeling data.

External testers work unpaid.

A $150 billion company built on free labor from the global south.

The "open source AI" lie is their latest con.

Meta pushes "open" models while patenting key components.

Zuckerberg says it's "good for developers" while Meta dominates.

DeepSeek from China just exposed how fake Western "openness" really is.

They've turned Richard Stallman's liberation movement into corporate feudalism.

What started as empowering users against monopolies now CREATES monopolies.

Big Tech harvests community innovation, plants patent walls, charges rent on digital sharecropping.

The AI disruption proves it works.

While millions contributed free training data and code, a handful of companies worth trillions emerged.

Your tweets trained their models.
Your GitHub repos built their empires.
Your free labor created their monopolies.

Time for a reckoning. Demand fair compensation.

Use restrictive licenses. Build worker cooperatives.

Or watch the next generation of developers burn out building Big Tech's empire for free.

The code was open - until they slammed the vault door shut.

I’m Shawn, a Generative AI Consultant passionate about building AI-driven solutions.

I write about AI, startups, and the future of work.

If you found these insights valuable: Sign up for my free AI newsletter!

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Follow me @shawnchauhan1 for more.

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More from @shawnchauhan1

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Oct 9, 2025

Silicon Valley didn't start with garage startups.

The $7T tech empire was founded by eugenicists who sterilized 20,000 people.

It started with genocide, stolen land, and a university running America's eugenics program.

This is the story they don't want you to know 🧵

Before Google. Before Apple. Before venture capital.

The land was Ohlone territory.

50 tribelets. 10,000 people.

A gift economy that lasted over 1,000 years.

No kings. No prisons. Just sustainable living and ecological balance.

Spanish missions destroyed it all.

San Francisco. Santa Clara - now under Intel's headquarters.

These weren't churches. They were concentration camps.

- Forced relocation.
- Gender separation.
- Whippings.
- Deadly epidemics.

California's indigenous population: 310,000 to 100,000 in decades.

Read 16 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Oct 2, 2025

In 1606, the Dutch became the first Europeans to land on Australia.

For 164 years, they mapped 70% of the continent.

Then they just... walked away.

What they did next gifted Britain an entire continent and changed world history forever 🧵

1606: Dutch captain Willem Janszoon becomes the first European to step on Australian soil.

He charts 250km of coastline.

Mistakes it for New Guinea.

Finds no gold, no spices.

Files a report.

The Dutch East India Company shrugs and goes back to counting nutmeg profits.

For the next 90 years, Dutch ships keep "accidentally" discovering Australia.

- Dirk Hartog (1616).
- Frederik de Houtman (1619).
- François Thijssen (1627).
- Abel Tasman circles Tasmania (1642).

By 1644, they've mapped the entire western, northern, and southern coasts.

Read 14 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Sep 17, 2025

While Europe wallowed in its "Dark Ages," Africa's medieval empires were flexing wealth that makes today's billionaires look broke.

Mansa Musa was so rich his generosity crashed entire economies.

But your history books forgot to mention it. Here's why 🧵

The Mali Empire wasn't some small kingdom.

It was 1.24 million square kilometers - bigger than France and Germany combined.

50 million people. 100,000 troops.

While Europe's kings begged Italian bankers for loans, Mali literally grew gold like crops.

In 1324, Mansa Musa went on pilgrimage with 60,000 people and 12,000 slaves carrying gold staffs.

He gave away 20,000 ounces of gold as tips.

The result was that - Egypt's economy collapsed for a decade.

Gold prices crashed 20%.

One man's road trip broke the Middle East.

Read 16 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Sep 16, 2025

The Roman Empire didn't "fall" in 476 AD.

That's Western propaganda to hide the truth.

Rome survived another 1,000 years, thrived, and only died in 1453.

Your history books lied to you about the greatest empire cover-up in human history 🧵

When barbarians sacked Rome in 476, the Eastern Roman Empire didn't blink.

Emperor Zeno in Constantinople absorbed Western titles, maintained Roman law, kept imperial succession intact.

Same empire. Same Romans. Same power.

Just different geography.

These "Byzantines" never called themselves that.

They were ROMANS - Romaioi - until the very end.

Constantinople was "New Rome."

Their laws? Pure Roman code.

Their emperors? Direct successors to Augustus.

The term "Byzantine" was invented in 1557 to delegitimize them.

Read 17 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Sep 15, 2025

A 2011 WWF study called Genghis Khan "the greenest invader in history."

He killed 40 million people (11% of world population) and accidentally cooled the entire planet.

Here's how history's greatest mass murderer removed 700 million tons of CO2 🧵

This isn't medieval folklore. It's peer-reviewed science.

The 2011 Carnegie study revealed Mongol massacres cleared so much farmland that forests reclaimed 700 million tons of carbon.

That's equivalent to removing every car from Earth's roads for an entire year.

The numbers are staggering: 40 million dead (11% of world population).

22% of Earth's land surface conquered.

Abandoned cities across China, Persia, Russia.

Empty farmlands stretching from Korea to Hungary.

Nature rushed back in. Forests exploded across Eurasia.

Read 15 tweets

Shawn Chauhan

@shawnchauhan1

Sep 13, 2025

Stalin killed 20+ million people (Double the Holocaust) yet Hitler gets all the villain spotlight.

In 2025, every school teaches Anne Frank but skips the Holodomor famine that starved 7 million Ukrainians.

Here's how the world's deadliest dictator escaped justice 🧵

The numbers aren't even close.

Stalin's death machine ran for 30 years:

- Great Purge (1.75M executed)
- Holodomor famine (7M Ukrainians starved)
- Gulag camps (2.5M worked to death).

Hitler's 4-year blitz killed 6M Jews.

Both evil - but Stalin's scale dwarfs it.

Stalin industrialized death differently.

Hitler built gas chambers - obvious evil.

Stalin used quotas: "Execute 1,000 kulaks per region."

Bureaucratic genocide. Paperwork murders.

His own generals got bullets.

Entire ethnic groups got cattle cars to Siberia.
40% died en route.