Instagram Message posted 2/14/2026:
Hi folks, I wanted to give you a heads up:
By the end of this month (Feb 2026), my art will no longer be available on platforms that support a techno-fascist surveillance agenda.
This means my music will be pulled off of Spotify, Amazon, and Apple. It means I will be archiving and removing my videos and music from Youtube (Google). And it means I will be archiving my Instagram page and deleting all my videos and posts from this platform (Meta).
I realize this may seem like an extreme measure. It's not something I expect other artists to do, but it feels necessary for me to do. It is part of my economic boycott of big tech and the data-mining companies actively colluding with fascist governments.
Their agenda is clear: to destroy free and open information sharing on the internet and enact a surveillance state where police and militarized violence is the norm. This boycott is a form of resistance against a techno-fascist machine which is currently using these platforms to kidnap, disappear, incarcerate, and murder migrants and other marginalized members of our communities.
This is not the act of a luddite. I am not anti-tech or anti-internet, nor do I intend to 'disappear into the woods.' (I already did that in my 20s! Didn't solve my problems or stop the rise of fascism!) I love the internet and what it stands for -- internet connection has been the source of some of my most meaningful passions, relationships, and life experiences. It's a necessary tool for resistance movements, disabled people, marginalized experiences, and young people living with home-based abuse.
I do not accept the assumption that internet technology is inherently harmful or anti-human! It is the tech companies which have created this reality, from their attempts to enclose something inherently democratic, open-source, and revolutionary. Do not let anti-tech sentiment make you believe that internet access needs to be banned or controlled by the government -- this is playing directly into their hands!!!
I believe in the future of the internet - an internet built on open-sourced software, passionate programmers working for good, digital privacy, cooperatively-owned marketplaces, and global communication free from surveillance by repressive regimes.
That is why I can no longer invest my energy or let my art be used for a machine which seeks the opposite. I do not accept that this is the best we can hope for. I do not accept that this is a necessary evil, with which we must comply in order for our art to be heard or received.
My music will still be available on Bandcamp, as well as more equitable streaming services such as Qobuz. I'm also a founding artist member of the new cooperatively-owned Subvert platform, where my music will be available for purchase soon. If you previously purchased my music on Amazon or Apple and will no longer be able to access your purchases, please reach out and I will send you files for your digital library myself! Though I'm removing my videos from IG, my Instagram account will remain up as an avenue for contact.
I will also be working to present all my removed videos (from Youtube and Instagram) on self-hosted, archival platforms. I plan to update folks about this through my email newsletter. You can sign up above if you want to stay in the loop.
There's a lot of work to do in order to recreate these platforms for ourselves. But resisting oppressive power is never easy or convenient. Taking my art out of this machine is truly one of the smallest things I can do. The bigger task is envisioning what comes next -- what do we build instead, when we refuse to accept the conditions we live under?
Passionate and brilliant people have been envisioning the free and open internet since its origin. Tech companies have had to exert so much market-based manipulative control in order to create the internet reality that we now see as "normal." All it takes is enough people rejecting the normality and convenience in favor of something new, something creative, something real.
Let's do this, together.
The internet is dead.
LONG LIVE THE INTERNET!
-Fern