Has the Algorithm Already Decided Our Future?
Plus: Fake It Till You Make It
Dear Citizens,
Are we seeing you on June 4th? Sign up today for our upcoming talk, Big Tech’s hostile takeover of democracy: Europe at a crossroads, with Citizens founder Carole Cadwalladr, investor-turned-big-tech critic Roger McNamee, Reinier van Lanschot MEP and former MEP Sophie in 't Veld.
Team Citizens
Here’s what else to read, watch and know this week.
🤡 ONE READ: Faking It 🤡
Was anything ever real? In New York this week, author Lane Brown has a great long read about the nexus between slop and sales. In “The Feed is Fake,” Brown writes that the latest “viral” song, movie, meme, influencer, and celebrity drama was probably the product of a stealth marketing campaign. How does he know? Well…
Joe Lim estimates that 90 percent of what you see on the internet is advertising in disguise, and he should know. For three years, Lim ran a company called Floodify, which at its peak operated 65,000 dummy social-media accounts used to drum up attention on behalf of paying clients. On a typical day, he says, Floodify posted 50,000 videos across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X, all of them designed to pass for the unscripted output of ordinary users.
👉 Read the whole piece here.
👀 ONE WATCH: Forecasting the Future 👀
What happens when the future arrives pre-decided? This conversation between Oxford philosopher Carissa Véliz and (the aforementioned) Roger McNamee looks at how many of life’s possibilities are now filtered through forecasts, and what it means for humanity. Watch here:
👉 Bonus watch: A few weeks ago we shared an invite to EFF’s conversation on how to “disenshittify the internet”. That conversation is now live.
In discussion with Wendy Liu, Cory Doctorow makes it clear: platforms are not as promised, Big Tech is profiting, and you should be frustrated.
🗑️ ONE ACTION: What’s Up, WhatsApp? 🗑️
Should you delete WhatsApp? Maybe! Over on Substack, Citizen’s chatroom contributor Alex writes that it may not be easy, but you can swap WhatsApp for Signal and still keep your community:
It’s hard to completely quit WhatsApp. It’s okay. You don’t need to. Instead, simply take 10 to install Signal. That allows others to leave WhatsApp, because you’ve now given them a convenient way to keep in touch with you without WhatsApp. You’ve created the opportunity of community without enriching Meta. And that’s a wonderful first step. Be the change you want to see in the world!
👉 Read the full post from Alex here.
And if so moved, your one action this week could be hitting the delete button on WhatsApp.
That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens
*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! 350+ people share practical advice on protecting your data, organising against Big Tech and staying ahead of what you need to know.
