Media

Turn Off the Internet

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Big tech has built machines designed for one thing: to hold your attention. The algorithms don’t care what keeps you scrolling. It could be puppy videos or conspiracy theories about election fraud. They only care that you keep consuming. And unfortunately nothing keeps people engaged quite like rage.

The executives at these companies will tell you they’re neutral platforms, that they don’t choose what content gets seen. This is a lie. Every algorithmic recommendation is an editorial decision. When YouTube’s algorithm suggests increasingly extreme political content to keep someone watching, that’s editorial. When Facebook’s algorithm amplifies posts that generate angry reactions, that’s editorial. When Twitter’s trending algorithms surface conspiracy theories, that’s editorial.

They are publishers. They have always been publishers. They just don’t want the responsibility that comes with being publishers.

For years, these companies have hidden behind Section 230 protections while operating more like media companies than neutral platforms. They’ve used recommendation algorithms to actively shape what billions of people see every day, then claimed they bear no responsibility for the consequences. It’s like a newspaper publisher claiming they’re not responsible for what appears on their front page because they didn’t write the articles themselves.

We need to be honest about what these algorithms are doing to our democracy. They’re not just amplifying existing divisions, they’re creating new ones. They’re not just reflecting polarization, they’re manufacturing it. Every time someone opens one of these apps, they’re being shown content specifically chosen to provoke an emotional response. That’s not neutral. That’s manipulation.

This isn’t a technology problem. This is a business and choice problem. These companies could change their algorithms tomorrow to prioritize accuracy over engagement, community over conflict, human wellbeing over profit. They choose not to because extremism is more profitable than moderation.

The solution isn’t to ask nicely for these companies to do better. We tried that. The solution isn’t to hope users will abandon these platforms en masse. That won’t happen as long as the network effects keep people trapped.

The solution is regulation. Real regulation. Not the performative theater we’ve seen in congressional hearings, but actual laws with actual consequences.

We need algorithmic transparency. These companies should be required to disclose how their recommendation systems work and what content they’re amplifying.

We need algorithmic accountability. When an algorithm recommends content that leads to violence, there should be consequences. And we need algorithmic choice. Users should have the right to see chronological feeds, not just algorithmically curated ones designed to manipulate their emotions.

Most importantly, we need to end the liability shield these companies hide behind. If you’re going to operate as a publisher, making editorial decisions about what content gets amplified, then you should face the same legal responsibilities as any other publisher.

Turn off the internet. Or fix it. Those are the only choices we have left. The time for hoping these companies will self-regulate is over. The time for treating algorithmic manipulation as an inevitable part of modern life is over. We know what these systems do. We know who they hurt. The only question left is whether we’re going to do something about it.

Long Live the Zine

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Pittsburgh-based nonprofit news outlet PublicSource is experimenting with a new printed edition, although not the typical format for which legacy media is known. Taking a page from the underground publishing playbook, PublicSource is releasing neighborhood-focused zines intended to meet communities where they are – at coffee shops, community centers, their neighbor’s home – and create a hyperlocal publication with impact.

Zines are independently published, noncommercial publications that are often handmade and focus on very specific subject matter. They carry a storied history, with some scholars tracing zine lineage back to Thomas Paine’s political pamphlet Common Sense in 1776. The modern era of zine culture in the U.S. was ushered in during the late-19th century’s amateur press movement and carried through the 20th century with help from the Harlem Renaissance, science fiction fandom and punk rock movements.

PublicSource’s foray into zine publication is in the spirit of these previous movements, but also brings with it a reaction to the digiral culture of our day. Halle Stockton on the rationale:

We intentionally chose the zine format: a small, printed publication you can hold, flip through, pass to a friend or tuck into your bag. It’s low-tech and high-touch. It slows you down just a little. It doesn’t ping or scroll. And it doesn’t require an algorithm to find its audience.

There’s something profound in Stockton’s phrase “high-touch.” The tactile experience of paper creates engagement that’s very different from media that’s mediated through a glass screen. The physical act of flipping pages, the inability to hyperlink away to endless distractions, the constraint of finite space – these aren’t limitations. They’re features. They force both writer and reader into a more intentional relationship with the stories.

I think this is an interesting move for a media outlet like PublicSource. Journalism needs to become more local. It needs to connect with people on the issues that directly impact them, their neighbors and their neighborhoods. It’s smart PublicSource considers the zine project to be one element of a broader strategy to “inform and inspire the Pittsburgh region through the power of deep, independent journalism,” because the artisanal nature of the format does raise questions about scalability.

While most of our information these days arrives through algorithmic feeds and endless scroll, there’s something quietly revolutionary about a folded piece of paper that exists entirely outside that system. PublicSource’s zine experiment reminds us that sometimes the most innovative approach is also the most ancient one: putting words on paper and handing them directly to your neighbors.

Whether this model can scale remains to be seen, but perhaps that’s missing the point. Zines were never about scale – they were and continue to be about connection, community, and the radical idea that everyone has a story worth telling. Maybe what modern journalism needs isn’t more reach, but more touch.

Flow, Stock and the Open Web

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Fifteen years ago, one of my favorite writers Robin Sloan wrote about the concept of “stock and flow” as they relate to digital media. His metaphor, borrowed from economics, distinguished between the ephemeral stream of updates (flow) and the durable lasting content (stock) that builds value over time. I stumbled upon this post again this week, probably through a bit of Mastodon flow, and reading it among today’s modern context feels both prescient and incomplete – prescient because Sloan astutely identifies the emerging tension between immediate engagement and lasting value, and incomplete in that he couldn’t have predicted how dramatically over the coming decade the pendulum would swing toward flow.

The intervening years have seen the rise and dominance of algorithms, short-form video, and endless streams of ephemeral content. These are the feeds we come to know and love¹ . We’ve optimized our digital lives for flow to an extent that would have been hard to imagine in 2010. The “treadmill” Sloan described has become a high-speed conveyor belt, perpetually delivering new content while whisking away anything more than a few hours old.

I’ve noticed something interesting happening, though. As our digital lives have become increasingly dominated by flow, there seems to be a growing hunger for stock – for content with permanence, depth, and lasting value. You can see it. You can feel it. I don’t think it’s just a notion of nostalgia from elder millennials like myself; it’s an emerging & collective awareness that the endless streams often leave us feeling empty and disconnected from what matters. Even my Gen-Z kids tell me this.

In my mind, the open web is the natural home for stock media. While social platforms optimize for ‘engagement’ (read: time spent scrolling) and viral spread, the open IndieWeb creates space for content that develops and appreciates over time. Take this post as an example. It’s referencing a blog post from 15 years ago! When you own your platform, you’re free from the tyranny of flow. Your words can find their audience through myriad entry points, through intentional discovery, through the slow build of genuine connection rather than viral mechanics.

This matters because stock isn’t just about content strategy – it’s about how we think, how we create, and how we build understanding over time. When everything is flow, we lose the ability to develop ideas fully, to let thoughts mature and evolve. We sacrifice depth for immediacy, wisdom for novelty.

The open web provides the much needed infrastructure for digital permanence. Through evergreen protocols like hyperlinks and technologies like RSS, we can create connections between pieces of stock content that grow stronger over time. Unlike social platforms where old content effectively disappears, the open web allows ideas to find new audiences months or years after publication.

Now, we can’t reject flow entirely. As Sloan noted as early as 2010, we need both. But these times call for us to consciously rebalance. We need to recognize that some ideas need time to develop and that some conversations are worth having at a human pace rather than an algorithmic one.

I’ve personally experienced this rebalancing since moving my writing to this self-hosted corner of the internet. Free from the pressure to feed the algorithm, I find myself thinking differently about what I create. I’m more willing to let ideas develop over time, to revisit and refine thoughts, to build a body of work that has coherence and permanence.

The economics of stock and flow have shifted too. While flow still dominates attention economy, I think stock increasingly drives genuine interest and lasting value. In a world of generative AI, thoughtful, accurate, nuanced and human-created stock content has (and will) become more valuable, not less.

I believe we are entering a renaissance of stock media on the open web. As more people grow weary of the endless scroll, I think they’ll seek out spaces for deeper engagement and lasting connection. The infrastructure exists – through the basic building blocks of the open web. What’s needed now is a shift in how we think about creation and consumption.

Sloan was right about the importance of balancing stock and flow. What he couldn’t have predicted was how corporate flow would have evolved over those years. He also couldn’t have predicted how the open web would persist over the decades as a natural home for stock, providing both the technical infrastructure and the cultural space for media that endures.

A Shield Against Enshittification

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

I’ve noticed a lot of talk about hyperlinks lately. A post from Nilay Patel initially caught my attention yesterday and it was followed by a wonderful article from Anil Dash about the ways corporate social media platforms like Substack work hard to co-opt open protocols and keep users inside their respective walled gardens. Key to his argument is the fact that people are now referring to their email newsletters as “their Substacks.” Dash writes:

We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to “read my Amazon”. A great director trying to promote their film by saying “click on my Max”. That’s how much they’ve pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as “my Substack”, there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification.

Email is email. Writing is writing. Personally, I’ve worked hard to establish a POSSE approach to publishing my thoughts on the internet. The way it works is this: I publish everything on this website, where I own the domain and the content that lives here, and then I choose how and where that content gets delivered. You like email newsletters? Cool, that’s an option. Are you old school and want to subscribe via RSS? Yup. Do you spend your time on Mastodon or Bluesky? Posts hit those platforms as well. I even do this for shorter, in the moment posts that appear as if I’m posting from within the platform itself. This way of working is my attempt to shield myself from the eventual enshittification that is inevitable on any platform that needs to create a return for investors¹.

A lot of folks are really enjoying their time on Bluesky right now. They’re harkening back to their glory days of early Twitter when the firehose still existed, reverse chron was the only feed, influencers hadn’t been born yet, and the social web was like the Wild West. I’ll admit, I am caught up in the nostalgia a bit too.

Bluesky is is a corporation, however, and it’s raising a lot of money from private equity. Eventually the platform will need to generate revenue and there are really only a few ways to do that in the context of social media. All of those ways will typically make platforms worse for users.

Hopefully I’m wrong and Bluesky becomes a social platform that honors its users at scale. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts, but I’m not holding my breath. If and when enshittification does come to Bluesky, and there is a mass exodus to the next big social platform, at least the POSSE philosophy will have served me well.