Beyond the Browser: Choosing Dignity in a Digital World
An African Diasporic Call to Reclaim Power, Protect Presence, and Refuse Extraction.
Dear mindful souls,
The way we browse matters. But, how does selecting an Internet browser software relate to dignity for people of the African diaspora?
The way we search, translate, and gather information is never neutral. And for those of us within the global African diaspora, these daily digital choices shape more than convenience, they shape access, safety, and relation.
You deserve tools that see you, not sort you. Tools that offer clarity without profiling. Tools that make communication possible across oceans without tracking the current of your every move for remarketing.
This offering matters because how we search, browse, and translate is not just technical-it's ancestral. Every tool we choose carries memory. To reject extractive browsers and tracking engines is to remember that access itself is sacred. "Presence & Remembering" isn't just a tag here at MORE of What U Like; it's the heartbeat of this piece. It names the quiet, powerful truth that digital discernment is cultural work. We are not just staying safe, we are staying connected to who we've always been, choosing with care, and refusing to let surveillance rewrite our way of knowing.
✨ Support Wil’s Transcending — 🔥 Fuel this fire — with a donation.
Digital Dignity in the Face of Shame
To choose ourselves is to face down centuries of shame placed upon us by those who call Africa a problem to solve rather than a people to respect. The phrase "the dark continent" still echoes through algorithms and trade routes. It was never only a comment on literal skin shade, it was also a judgment about our worth.
But, we are awakening to beautiful, protective, nurturing, and original radiant darkness and no longer seeking 'light.' We are reclaiming ownership of our depth as the source of it all. Choosing tools that protect us, rather than exploit us, is a daily act of dignified refusal. We refuse to accept that we don't belong in the rooms where data becomes power. We belong, and we enter with inherent strength and skillful discernment, not dependence.
The Diaspora Responds: A Global Reclamation
Across the African Diaspora, there is a shared memory of extraction. From Ghana to Haiti, Brazil to Brixton, we have lived the consequences of being mapped, counted, and controlled. Today, the pipelines are digital. And so too is the resistance.
When we choose ethical browsers, private search engines, and non-predatory translation tools, we unify not in nostalgia, but in strategy. Our refusal to feed Big Tech's hunger is a declaration: we will not fund our own continued exploitation. Instead, we invest in a global Black infrastructure, rooted in privacy, reciprocity, and cultural memory.
Digital Extraction Mirrors Resource Theft
Africa is not underdeveloped, it is over-extracted. Our minerals fuel the devices others use to surveil us. Our fiber routes carry the data of empires. Our youth innovate without capital while foreign firms patent the future. The same forces that for centuries have stolen gold, people, and land now also steal metadata, bandwidth, and biometric profiles. Every browser that mines your behavior without consent repeats this pattern.
This is not just memory-it is modern. Google operates in Africa through tax havens. Facebook's Free Basics offered "free internet" in exchange for total control. Israeli and U.S. firms install surveillance tools for regimes while denying Africans control over our own networks. We are done being data mines. Choosing ethical tools is not preference. It is protection. It is economic strategy. It is ancestral defense in digital form.
That's why I want to share four alternatives: Mozilla Firefox browser and the Qwant search engine, plus Immersive Translate and Mate Translate browser extensions.
Why Qwant and Firefox?
Firefox and Qwant are not the most popular. But they are among the most principled.
Qwant is a French search engine that doesn't track you. It doesn't build a behavioral profile. It doesn't save your searches. You can explore, inquire, and read without being shaped by algorithms tuned to sell or surveil.
Nommo - sacred power of the spoken word lives here in the clarity of naming what extracts and what protects.
Firefox, built by a nonprofit, is one of the few browsers that puts user freedom before corporate gain. It blocks hidden trackers. It lets you separate identities in "containers" so your work, your studies, and your personal life aren't all mapped into one marketing profile. And it's open source, meaning its code is visible, transparent, and governed by community, not conglomerate.
Communalism - the principle that we thrive together, not alone - is honored when a browser places user needs above profit and shares its structure with the world.
In contrast, Chrome and Safari-owned by Google and Apple-are rooted in extraction. Chrome feeds Google's ad machine. Safari is linked into Apple's tightly controlled ecosystem. Both offer speed, but at the cost of your digital autonomy.
For many of us, speed is not the priority. Integrity is.
This is about more than preference
Our movements, across Ghana, Oakland, Nigeria, Brazil, the Caribbean, and beyond, require digital infrastructure that doesn't feed the systems we're trying to outgrow.
We're telling stories. We're building cooperatives. We're creating study groups, healing spaces, and transnational recovery circles. That work deserves tools that don't mine our behavior for profit.
Restoration of Maat - balance, truth, right relation - begins here. Make the everyday choice to move through the web in balance and right relation.
To use Firefox and Qwant is to opt out of the pipeline. It's to say: I want to access knowledge without being watched. I want to move online without being scored, sorted, or softened by someone else's lens.
And this includes language
Many of us write in English. But we don't always speak it first. We read in Wolof, in Swahili, in Yoruba, in French. Language shouldn't be a wall.
Sankofa - go back and get lost ancestral wisdom - is active here-retrieving languages, remembering ways of knowing that refuse colonized access.
I've found two tools that let us translate full pages in Firefox browser-like this one-without Google's reach.
Immersive Translate
* Full-page translation, side-by-side or hover mode
* Works on Firefox
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/immersive-translate-trans/bpoadfkcbjbfhfodiogcnhhhpibjhbnh
Mate Translate
* Supports 100+ languages, including many African ones
* Works on Firefox
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mate-translate-%E2%80%93-translat/ihmgiclibbndffejedjimfjmfoabpcke
These tools let us speak across the diaspora more freely. You can install either and read posts in the language that feels most alive to you.
Spirituality lives in the everyday-even in browser extensions, even in how we meet each other online because the sacred shows up in how we live.
In closing
This isn't about tech loyalty. It's about digital discernment.
Some of the fiercest work we do begins with small switches. A different browser. A different search engine. A different way of meeting each other online.
I choose Firefox. I search with Qwant. I translate with tools that don't surveil.
Because we deserve to connect without being consumed.Because every word matters.Because every reader matters.
Wil (Transcending)
🦊 Download Mozilla Firefox:
Desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux):
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefoxiOS (iPhone/iPad):
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-private-safe-browser/id989804926
🔍 Set Qwant as Your Default Search Engine:
For Chrome:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/qwant-search-engine/kplfenefaakjhjkklghidleljeocgdapFor Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/qwant-the-search-engine/For Other Browsers (Edge, Opera, Safari):
https://help.qwant.com/en/docs/qwant-search/add-qwant-on-desktop/