ItInsightsWorld General: A one week November 2026 Call for Tech Workers to Put good Back into Software

This appeal comes from a technology worker who plans to stop work during November 2026. The selected personal interval is the third week of November; colleagues may select any one week and align days with peers. The statement says no AI tokens were used for writing or research and describes the text as 100% human written.

The stated reason is that after years of accumulated damage, the human side of technology is no longer being defended. Artificial intelligence is treated as a symptom rather than the whole cause. The deeper sequence begins with hostility toward software users, moves to alienation of non-users from society, and now reaches hostility toward the people who build software, whether or not their work involves writing code.

What the appeal says software was meant to deliver

The appeal asks what software was originally meant to accomplish and what justified building companies, jobs, and industries around it. Its answer is empowerment of people, and it presents software as one of the most accessible and inexpensive kinds of advanced technology ever distributed to so many. Examples include internet access, search, navigation, live communication, live streaming, e-commerce, fintech, and health advice, described as reachable forms of magic.

It also states that producing such systems needs equipment not very different from using them: one machine can develop software and consume it. This condition, the argument says, supported an engineer's dream of a utopia in which information, communication, market access, and shared prosperity would be available to everyone. The audience was never only coders; it was anyone able to grasp what software could do and willing to want it to do good.

How the appeal describes the shift in incentives

According to the appeal, the new investors were not merely seeking returns; ordinary established businesses could provide returns. They were gambling for absurd highs. Believing software had near-zero marginal cost, they created walled gardens to charge rent from users and converted low initial cost into enormous profits.

When upkeep became more expensive, especially after early shoddy builds had been rushed to market out of greed to crush competition, profit remained but failed to satisfy them. Advertising expanded, which the text calls the largest assault on the privacy of the general public ever. Advertising took over software, and nearly all software began serving the goal of drawing attention to advertisements in one way or another.

The appeal then says they realized the same game could be used for politics, did so, succeeded, and made even more outrageous money. After that, they did not want to pay the workers who kept software alive and turned against them.

Consequences for the public and for builders

The account says ordinary people have lost control of daily life. Accessing their own money, messages, and pictures requires a locked, always-online device that tracks location, health, and similar details.

Builders are said to face a parallel harm: they are forced to rent costly small apartments near offices, commute, or do both, only to hold video calls with colleagues. That is presented as weakening the software they create and thereby weakening other software. The larger framing is madness that takes from the poor and hands everything to the powerful.

The author says the limit has been reached: the greed is rejected, the need to control workers is rejected, and a strike is being undertaken.

Common goal, different local lists

Specific demands are said to vary by place, habit, company, and role. The shared aim is to return humanity and good to software and make software empower the public instead of acting as a resource extraction machine for the rich and powerful.

Issue	Stated position	Qualification
User-hostile design	Stop forcing workers to write user hostile software; do not lock software down to extract more rent from users.	Falls under the common goal of empowering people.
Addictive algorithms	Stop forcing workers to use addictive algorithms; do not push anti-social, hate-mongering adware junk on people.	Falls under the common goal of empowering people.
Work location	Stop forcing workers to commute unnecessarily: not twice a week, not once a week, not 11.33% of the week, but simply no; let individuals and teams decide how to work.	Existing performance management tools are enough if performance is poor.
Micro-management	Stop all forms of unnecessary micro-management.	Details depend on the company and role.
AI slop	Stop forcing workers to sell slop; do not shove AI-generated nonsense at users.	Falls under the common goal of empowering people.
Customer service	Stop replacing human customer service colleagues with AI agents.	Letting AI handle some repetitive work is one thing, but it cannot replace a dedicated human who cares about helping customers.
Quality time	Stop making workers absorb the slop themselves; if software is bad, they need time to fix it.	Deadlines cannot exceed the complexity of real life.
Growth expectations	Stop forcing growth.	Some people are content with current jobs and roles; not everyone wants to write lengthy self-praise essays for mediocre achievements, and for many a job is a job.

The point of pausing

The text states that the exact list is less important than the signal, because needs differ, and the list should not be universal. The aim is to communicate that control is not indefinite: if cooperation is withheld, a fragile arrangement can fall tomorrow. Software, in this view, must remain a means of empowering people, not a tool for satisfying greedy billionaires.

Colleagues are asked to pick their own one week in November 2026 and join the stoppage.