Tipping the Scales
Plus: Doomscrolling
Dear Citizens,
The aliens aren’t here yet, that we know of, but they’ve got a domain. The US government now owns Aliens.gov. Anyway, here’s what else to read, know and watch this week.
🦣 ONE READ: Less is More 🦣
Our friend and cultural/internet critic Yancey Strickler re-posted his incredible 2024 essay “The Post-Individual” last week. What happened? A pile-on. In this brief but important reflection, Yancey asks (paraphrasing…) a pretty important question: Is bigger better?
I posted the essay because I think the ideas are relevant and point to some important shifts we’re all going through. Most people responded exactly the way I’d hoped. But scale doesn’t just amplify the signal you want. It hands a megaphone to everyone else too. My presence on public channels gave strangers the license to try to wreck my work and ego for sport.
👉 Read Yancey’s whole post when you can. Also, take the time to go back to his 2024 essay too. No trolling please.
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🎧 ONE WATCH: Inside the Rage Machine 🎧
Spoiler alert: We’re doomed. Ha! Still, the BBC’s Inside the Rage Machine, which lays “the machinations of big tech bare in under an hour, frequently by people who worked inside Zuckerberg’s factory or on the Twitter-to-X transition, until they couldn’t bear the guilt and fear any longer and left to become whistleblowers is… quite something.”
👉 Watch here.
👉 Bonus read: From misogyny and conspiracy theories to political favouritism, the latest Meta and TikTok whistleblowers say platforms boosted harmful content after internal research showed outrage drove engagement. Full report here.
💻 ONE ACTION: Unencrypted 💻
For years, Meta has whittled away at every bit of transparency and privacy protections, from disabling independent research to… now this: ending support for encrypted messaging on Instagram.
From our friends at the Mozilla Foundation: Encryption helps ensure that your messages stay between you and the person with whom you’re communicating. When end-to-end encryption is enabled, no one – not even Meta – can snoop on you.
Should we all leave Meta platforms, if we haven’t already? Probably! But while we’re there, let’s hang on to encryption.
👉 Add your name to the petition here.
Every week we surface practical ways to turn concern into action. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.
👉 A bonus heads up: The next “No Kings” march in the US is March 28th - a nationwide day of action pushing back against an administration ruling through fear. And worldwide there’s some big plans for May Day. Let’s get out there, Citizens!
That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens
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