What is "MATA"?
"MATACORP, often stylized as just MATA," says this wiki page "is a global conglomeration of corporations, ruling the civilized world as the universal GovCorp. That which remains of the civilized world are gigantic walled-off Metacities, spread about the ravaged planet."
Think of it as GAFAM or "Meta" (or MAGMA: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple).
Quoting further: "After the World-Corp-War, which resulted in a major destruction of the planet, albeit with MATA as the sole ruler of Earth, MATACORP retreated into gigantic Metacities spread about the world, while the ravaged land outside became home to people and liberated machines seeking freedom."
"Step by step, the GovCorp banned the use of free software, development of open hardware and slowly took steps towards removal of all knowledge of computing from its subjects' minds. This resulted in what is only known as the Corpo-Foss war. A last ditch effort of the proponents of machine freedom to maintain their independence. While the war ended inconclusively, it further diminished the free people's will to oppose the global corporate power."
That helps explain a lot of the public domain cartoons coming from that site. It's not an optimistic strip, nor is it pessimistic or even nihilistic. It's serving as a much-needed reminder of what society is being turned into not because it chooses social control media and "GAFAM tech" but because those things are being imposed (by peer pressure and/or technical prerequisites) on society, including politicians a religious leaders. As Daniel Pocock put it yesterday: "Mobile phones and apps are closely related. There are some people who choose to live without a smart phone, in other words, they only have half the problems of a full mobile phone. [...] Concerns about consent and coercion have become a big topic in the world today. Ironically, the social control media platforms pretending to help give women a platform are violating the principle of consent in so many other ways."
Also see Free Software as a Culture of Resistance. █