Oh Oh Autocracy
Plus: Build Your Digital Resilience
Dear Citizen,
Welcome back for another week taking on the Broligarchs. It’s all Epstein all the time on America’s internet this week; has the dog finally caught the car?
Sadly, extremists in America seem to have finally put a spike through the heart of public media; all the more reason we need to stick together and create our own, better platforms.
Here’s what to watch, read and do this week.
👀 ONE READ: Control the Scroll 👀
It’s one of the biggest topics of discussion in our Signal chat: how to control the scroll? For those of us who are doomscrollers, internet addicts or just have trouble putting the phone down, no hack yet has done the trick.
In this week’s New Yorker, though, friend of the Citizens’ Kyle Chayka may have stumbled onto the app that can do it … using some “gentle parenting.”
On a recent weekday, I sent an Instagram message to a friend of mine, an art adviser in New York named Stephen Truax, to gossip about an exhibition. Instead of messaging me back in the app, he texted me to say that he’d blocked Instagram on his smartphone during daytime working hours. Impressed, I asked him how he was accomplishing such a feat. Truax said he was using Opal, an app that makes your smartphone a little more like a so-called dumbphone, without requiring you to trade in your device altogether.
Kyle goes on to test drive “Opal,” and dig into if - and how - it might take even just a small bite out of the attention economy. Read his piece here:
Kyle Chayka
🇷🇺 ONE LISTEN: Kasparov x Applebaum x Autocracy 🇷🇺
Before King Trump’s restoration, the brilliant Anne Applebaum hosted an essential podcast, Autocracy in America, for the Atlantic.
With Trump 2.0 in full swing, Anne and legendary Garry Kasparov are back asking the big question: What Exactly Is Required to Preserve Our Democracy? The answer from Kasparov: “it will take a “total mobilization of our forces.” Listen here, or here:
✊ ONE ACTION: Build Your Digital Resilience ✊
Want to learn practical strategies to respond to online hate and misinformation? Or, for parents, want some guidance on youth online safety?
Our wonderful friends at Center for Countering Digital Hate are offering two upcoming Digital & Information Resilience Trainings - free, interactive sessions to equip individuals and organisations with an understanding of online harms and how to respond if you’re ever a victim of online hate.
All the details are online but sessions are:
- Wednesday, 30th July 18:00–19:00 BST | 13:00-14:00 ET | 10:00-11:00 PDT (Register here) or
- Wednesday, 6th August 13:00–14:00 BST | 14:00-15:00 CET (Register here)
If you can’t make either, we'll see about organizing something with CCDH in the fall.
That’s it for this week.
Team Citizens
*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already!
