#AI algorithms for social engagement

[jpptech]

Social Media Trends 2025: What Businesses Can Learn from Service Zoom

In today's competitive digital landscape, staying relevant on social media is no longer a choice—it’s a necessity. As algorithms shift, new platforms emerge, and consumer expectations evolve, 2025 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for businesses to either adapt or get left behind.

So, how do you keep up with the fast-paced world of social media marketing? That’s where the expertise of Service Zoom becomes invaluable. With a finger firmly on the pulse of industry trends, Service Zoom is helping businesses of all sizes translate social activity into real, measurable growth.

Below, we explore the top social media trends for 2025—and how Service Zoom helps businesses not only understand them but leverage them effectively.

1. AI-Powered Content Creation is the New Normal

In 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a critical role in creating content that is smart, targeted, and personalized. AI tools are being used to:

Predict audience preferences

Create data-driven content calendars

Generate tailored captions and visual recommendations

Analyze past post performance for better future planning

Service Zoom uses cutting-edge AI to build and execute content strategies that feel human but perform with machine precision. This enables businesses to maintain consistent posting, higher engagement, and a unique brand voice—all with maximum efficiency.

2. Micro-Influencers are Replacing Celebrity Endorsements

Forget mega-celebrities with millions of followers. In 2025, micro-influencers (accounts with 5K–50K followers) offer better engagement, more authenticity, and tighter community ties.

Service Zoom helps businesses:

Identify niche influencers aligned with brand values

Build mutually beneficial collaborations

Track ROI from influencer campaigns

With this approach, businesses achieve better visibility in highly targeted communities, increasing both trust and conversion rates.

3. Short-Form Videos Still Rule the Feed

From TikTok trends to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, short-form video content continues to dominate social media in 2025.

Consumers crave snackable, visual content that delivers entertainment or value within seconds. Service Zoom’s content team specializes in crafting professional, eye-catching video content that fits your brand and stands out in a sea of scrolling.

Whether it’s behind-the-scenes footage, tutorials, testimonials, or trending challenges, Service Zoom ensures your videos are optimized for reach, relevance, and retention.

4. Social Commerce Is the Future of Shopping

Social media is no longer just a discovery tool—it’s becoming the end-to-end customer journey. With features like Instagram Shop, Facebook Marketplace, and TikTok Shopping, users are making purchases without ever leaving the app.

Service Zoom helps businesses:

Set up and manage social storefronts

Create shoppable posts and stories

Optimize product visibility through hashtags and SEO

Run effective social commerce ad campaigns

This integrated experience removes friction from the buying process, leading to higher conversions and increased brand loyalty.

5. Community Building Over Broadcast Marketing

Today’s audiences want to be part of something—not just marketed to. Community-driven engagement is a major trend in 2025.

Service Zoom helps brands build strong digital communities by:

Facilitating user-generated content

Hosting live Q&As and interactive sessions

Managing groups and forums

Responding to comments and DMs in real time

This two-way engagement not only humanizes your brand but also builds a loyal audience that becomes your best advocates.

6. Data-Driven Marketing Decisions

In 2025, guessing is gone. Data is king.

Service Zoom provides in-depth analytics dashboards that measure:

Engagement rates

Follower growth

Ad performance

Audience demographics

Conversion tracking

These insights help businesses adjust strategies in real time, double down on what works, and minimize what doesn’t—ultimately leading to a higher ROI.

7. Hyperlocal Targeting for Maximum Impact

If you run a local business, geo-targeted content is essential. Consumers are more likely to buy from brands that feel local and relevant.

Service Zoom uses hyperlocal tools to:

Run location-specific ad campaigns

Promote events, offers, and announcements to nearby audiences

Boost your local SEO through geo-tagging and maps integration

This allows small businesses to dominate their local market while keeping ad costs low and conversions high.

The Service Zoom Advantage

What makes Service Zoom stand out is their ability to turn complex trends into easy-to-execute strategies. Whether you're a startup looking to build brand awareness or an established business aiming to scale online, Service Zoom offers:

Customized social media marketing plans

Daily account management

Performance tracking and reporting

Ad campaign setup and optimization

Influencer outreach and content planning

They don’t just keep up with trends—they make them work for you.

Final Thoughts: Stay Ahead, Not Behind

The social media space in 2025 is packed with potential. But without the right partner, it can also be overwhelming. Don’t get left behind—learn, adapt, and grow with the expert guidance of Service Zoom SMM.

Whether it’s building your brand voice, launching a product campaign, or growing your followers organically—Service Zoom is your digital partner for real growth in the modern era.

[rphazarika]

Mobile Phones and Children: The Hidden Dangers of Digital Addiction and Data Manipulation

Explore how smartphone use and exposure to emotionally charged content can impact children's mental health, leading to anxiety and depression. Learn about the role of AI algorithms and get tips for fostering healthier digital habits for our kids.

In today’s digital world, mobile phones are more than just tools—they have become an integral part of everyday life, especially for children and adolescents. While these devices offer numerous benefits, such as entertainment, education and social connectivity, there is a darker side to their pervasive presence. Beyond visible impacts like mobile phone addiction, there is an unseen influence from…

[8pxl]

BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BLUESKY

Hiya! Curious about joining bluesky but intimidated by all the features? Already on bluesky but want to learn more? Then welcome to my quick guide on getting started and navigating bluesky!~

What is Bluesky?

it’s a social media site that’s owned by no single person or company. it's aim is to bring back the early days of twitter before bots, elon musk or algorithms took over. Personally I find the site really cozy, wholesome, and engaging. my Bluesky account for example

What’s unique about Bluesky?

→ CUSTOMIZATION: ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎your timeline is very easy to control. There’s tons of options, so be sure to go through each tab in your settings. some options include: turning off autoplay, changing the order in which threaded replies show, changing DM settings, content preferences and lots of visual app settings.

→ MODERATION LISTS: human made, mass blocklists. These are public lists of accounts that when you subscribe to you automatically block or mute everyone in that specific blocklist. A great way to avoid unwanted content, and interactions. ✦ Moderation lists I recommend will be below the cut

→ STARTER PACKS: recommendation lists on who to follow, made by users. You can even curate your own starter pack of recommendations! ✦ Starter pack recommendations will be below the cut

→ FEEDS: public timelines, basically. There are a lot of feeds you can join, or you can even create your own. I made a feed featuring just my pixel art so it doesn’t get cluttered with text posts or other photos in my media tab. ✦ I’ll post feeds I recommend below and link you to a tutorial on how to create your own feed

→ BLOCKING/MUTING: bluesky has a great blocking system. When you block someone they can no longer see, or interact with you. They also have a feature to make your blog inaccessible unless logged in. you can also mute specific people, delete post replies, and even detach your post from a reblog. You can also mute specific words, phrases, tags etc.

→ NSFW: bluesky allows NSFW content, including artwork, porn, lewds etc. They also have a great moderation page to avoid the content completely, censor the content, or show it if you’d wish. ✦ just go to settings > moderation > toggle on NSFW settings and it’ll let you heavily moderate.

→ LABELS: this is a really cool feature on the site, you can subscribe to certain pages that enable a lot of fun/useful labels that help you in different ways! (like pronoun tags, artist tags etc) ✦ Labels to browse will be posted below

→ COMMUNITIES: the vastly diverse communities really feel like the best parts of tumblr. since you can so heavily curate your experience, it can really feel like a calming oasis. Mine is mostly artists, and other creatives.

there’s also a large community of professional artists, art directors, authors, celebrities, and even the best shitposters from twitter. the app really is what you make of it but it’s thriving right now.

RECOMMENDATIONS & LINKS BELOW ⬎

→ MODERATION LISTS:

HATE SPEECH: NAZIS | MAGA | MAGAv2 | MAGAv3 | TRANSPHOBES & HOMOPHOBES | FAR RIGHT | FAR RIGHTv2 | FAR RIGHTv3 | ELON MUSK FANBOYS | ANTI-BLACK | ANTI-VAX

NFT/AI/CRYPTO: MASTERLIST | AI/NFT | AI/NFTv2 | AI FANBOYS | CRYPTO | NFTs

SPAM/SCAMMERS: SPAMBOTS | BOTS | CONTENT SCRAPERS | CONTENT FARMING

✦ to block or mute everyone in the blocklist at once, click subscribe in the top right corner:

→ STARTER PACKS:

ART: PIXEL ART | PIXEL ARTv2 | WOMEN OF PIXEL ART | BADASS DIGITAL ARTISTS | MAGIC THE GATHERING ARTIST | PAINTERS OF BLUESKY | INDIE COMIC CREATORS | LGBTQIA+ COMIC CREATORS | WEBCOMICS ULTIMATE COLLECTION

GENERAL: WOMEN OF BSKY | AUTHORS | LGBTQ NEWS

SHITPOSTERS: JUNIPER | JUNIPERv2 | MASTERLIST | SCIENCE SHITPOSTERS

✦ for more niche starter packs, use the search function. search your specific interest and ‘starter pack’ and you’ll find some!

→ FEEDS:

DISCOVER | WHATS TRENDING | MENTIONS | ART | TRENDING ART

THE GRAM: a timeline for exclusively image posts from those you follow. no textposts etc. ONLYPOST: similar to the gram, it shows a timeline of only those you follow. no reposts, just original posts. 📌: a way to bookmark posts. just reply with the pin emoji.

✦ there’s tons of others feeds as well! just use the feed tab and you can browse feeds or search for specific ones.

✦ TUTORIAL ON HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOM FEED FOR YOUR ART/POSTS

→ LABELS:

SKYWATCH: most popular label. Lots of useful labels!

AI Labels: identifies AI users, can also enable hiding the posters.

Pronouns: self explanatory but useful. can add a badge with your pronouns!

✦ you can search for additional label bots on bluesky!

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:

✦ EXPIRIENCE ENHANCING TOOLS RECS ✦ CLEARSKY: TRACK BLOCKS AND BLOCKLISTS ✦ SKYFEED: CREATE CUSTOM FEEDS EASILY ✦ use the block function often. do not entertain trolls or hate speech. ✦ as well as starter packs, there’s also lists! lists can be used in the same way to create curated lists of accounts. it’s a good way to keep track of specific genres of posters you’re interested in, and finding new ones! ✦ hashtags: use them! they’re beneficial in boosting your post. you can even link hashtags in your bio making you easier to find. another method of making you more visible is if you post an ‘interest’ post! basically just type things you’re interested in and it’ll help people find you / vice versa ! ✦ update your profile first thing, like bio avi etc. make a small post so people know you're real. interact and engage! the communities there are so welcoming!

I think that covers abt everything i wanted to cover! Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading lol

[netsanju]

[algoworks]

Diving deep into the AI-social media frontier! Excited to ride the wave of innovation, where algorithms are the wind beneath our digital wings.

Let's explore, connect, and create in this boundless realm of engagement.

[indembminsk]

How to Use AI to Increase Instagram Followers in 2024?

Instagram remains one of the most influential social media platforms in 2024, with users and businesses alike striving to expand their audience. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the approach toward growing followers on the platform. Let’s explore how to utilize AI to increase your Instagram followers effectively this year. Understanding Your Audience with AI…

[open-era]

How AI Drives Social Media Platform Advancements

AI fuels social media growth, powering personalised content, targeted ads, and enhanced user experiences. Get ready for a new era of connectivity! 🚀 #AI #SocialMediaAdvancements

Social Media: Connecting People in a Digital World Social media has become an indispensable part of our daily lives, seamlessly connecting individuals with their loved ones, celebrities, and influencers. However, in a fiercely competitive and ever-evolving market, how do these platforms manage to expand their user base and retain their audiences? The answer lies in the remarkable potential of…

[srbachchan]

DAY 6273

Jalsa, Mumbai Apr 19, 2025/Apr 20 Sat/Sun 1:12 am

words of wisdom from Shweta , sent to me 👆🏼 .. her repertoire of books and reading is immense .. as is of Navya .. it is such a delight to sit in their presence and company and be educated about aspects of life and the world .. it is astonishing ..

And that is what eats us elders up .. there is the desire to do and be a part of what this GEn thinks and does .. but the limitations of time barricade the impulse and the intent ..

Life did not move so rapidly in our time or in the time of our elders .. now the rapidity is so volatile that the wishes to accomplish all is overwhelming .. you do not want to miss out a single day, in case you miss something that you had wished you would want to do, or be a part of ..

The excitement of what the World does to day and the speed with which it does it is unbelievably attractive .. and one wants so desperately to be a art of it .. or many parts of it .. but time is not with us .. at our age we lament the time .. and we feel let down .. for the wish to be having the time to be involved , to test, to apply, to discover, to invent, to admire and enjoy that spectacle .. is huge ..

But the hugeness hits a wall .. the timeless wall of limitations ..

"एक घड़ी ख़रीद कर, हाथ में क्या बांध ली;

वक़्त पीछे ही पड़ गया मेरे ~ "

पूज्य बाबूजी के शब्द

My wishes as ever .. and the great battle of invention that percolates our lives persists to be in its excel ..

The excel of AI ..

So, I asked and it replied :

"Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence in machines designed to think, learn, and make decisions. It powers technologies like voice assistants, recommendation systems, and autonomous vehicles. AI works through algorithms that process data, recognize patterns, and improve over time through machine learning. It is transforming industries by automating tasks, enhancing productivity, and enabling innovative solutions. From healthcare diagnostics to personalized education, AI’s potential is vast. However, it also raises ethical concerns about bias, privacy, and job displacement. As AI continues to evolve, balancing innovation with responsibility will be key to ensuring it benefits society as a whole."

The clarity of social implications is a massive debate , engaging thinkers and artists and writers and indeed all creative talent ..

For the creative content of a writer are his words .. and if the AI data bank consumes that , as a part of a legacy to be maintained over time infinity, it can be used by ChatGPT to refer or use that extract for its personalised usage .. making it the property of ChatGPT ... NOT the property of the writers or the artists, from where it originally came ..

So the copyright of the artist has been technically 'stolen' , and he or she never gets the benefit of ts copyright, when GPT uses it for its presence .. !!!!

The true value of an artists creation will never be restored to his credit, because technology usurps it .. gulps it down deliciously , with an aerated drink and finalising its consumption with a belch 😜🤭 ... END OF CHAPTER !!!

End of discussion .. !!!

In time there shall be much to be heard and written on the subject ..

Each invention provides benefits .. but also victims ..

बनाये कोई - लाभ उठाए कोई और, जिसने उसे बनाया ही न हो

Love

Amitabh Bachchan

[teal-deer]

On the subject of "Where to flee when Tumblr goes down," I'd like to put out a pitch for Coin Return.

Coin Return is a classic style internet forum that is entirely user owned and operated. From their website:

Coin Return is a community-owned online forum and non-profit organization Member Supported Coin Return is always ad-free thanks to the financial support of its membership, but there is no obligation to contribute and no cost to participate. Human Moderated Good moderation is too important to leave up to AI. Human volunteers keep our community free of bigotry, trolls, and harassment. Community Owned We are not beholden to corporate ownership and have no obligation except to provide our members with a fun, reliable, and safe third space. User Driven No algorithm controls what you see. Watch the threads you want without being baited into engaging with topics you're not interested in.

Coin Return initially grew out of the Penny Arcade forums (I know! I know); the thing is, the PA forums had basically nothing to do with PA, and almost nobody on the forums actually read the comic anymore. It was just that it was an old fashioned message board with a big population. When PA decided to shut the forums down, the forum community decided to band together to make their own, wholly independent forums. So, if you ever had a problem with Penny Arcade, please rest assured that this community is entirely separate from that organization, even if it sort of grew out of the community around it.

I, for one, will probably only hang out on CoRe. I'm tired of social media, I'm tired of corporations, I'm tired of algorithms, I just want, basically, a community space.

CoRe is VERY NEW -- we only just opened up to users on April 1st (yeah, I know, choices were made), so if you join up, you, YES YOU, can be part of the site's future direction as well!

If you decide to show up there, I'm LucidSeraph. Drop into the Chat forums and make a thread for Tumblr refugees!

[critical-skeptic]

The Illusion of Complexity: Binary Exploitation in Engagement-Driven Algorithms

Abstract:

This paper examines how modern engagement algorithms employed by major tech platforms (e.g., Google, Meta, TikTok, and formerly Twitter/X) exploit predictable human cognitive patterns through simplified binary interactions. The prevailing perception that these systems rely on sophisticated personalization models is challenged; instead, it is proposed that such algorithms rely on statistical generalizations, perceptual manipulation, and engineered emotional reactions to maintain continuous user engagement. The illusion of depth is a byproduct of probabilistic brute force, not advanced understanding.

1. Introduction

Contemporary discourse often attributes high levels of sophistication and intelligence to the recommendation and engagement algorithms employed by dominant tech companies. Users report instances of eerie accuracy or emotionally resonant suggestions, fueling the belief that these systems understand them deeply. However, closer inspection reveals a more efficient and cynical design principle: engagement maximization through binary funneling.

2. Binary Funneling and Predictive Exploitation

At the core of these algorithms lies a reductive model: categorize user reactions as either positive (approval, enjoyment, validation) or negative (disgust, anger, outrage). This binary schema simplifies personalization into a feedback loop in which any user response serves to reinforce algorithmic certainty. There is no need for genuine nuance or contextual understanding; rather, content is optimized to provoke any reaction that sustains user attention.

Once a user engages with content —whether through liking, commenting, pausing, or rage-watching— the system deploys a cluster of categorically similar material. This recurrence fosters two dominant psychological outcomes:

If the user enjoys the content, they may perceive the algorithm as insightful or “smart,” attributing agency or personalization where none exists.

If the user dislikes the content, they may continue engaging in a doomscroll or outrage spiral, reinforcing the same cycle through negative affect.

In both scenarios, engagement is preserved; thus, profit is ensured.

3. The Illusion of Uniqueness

A critical mechanism in this system is the exploitation of the human tendency to overestimate personal uniqueness. Drawing on techniques long employed by illusionists, scammers, and cold readers, platforms capitalize on common patterns of thought and behavior that are statistically widespread but perceived as rare by individuals.

Examples include:

Posing prompts or content cues that seem personalized but are statistically predictable (e.g., "think of a number between 1 and 50 with two odd digits” → most select 37).

Triggering cognitive biases such as the availability heuristic and frequency illusion, which make repeated or familiar concepts appear newly significant.

This creates a reinforcing illusion: the user feels “understood” because the system has merely guessed correctly within a narrow set of likely options. The emotional resonance of the result further conceals the crude probabilistic engine behind it.

4. Emotional Engagement as Systemic Currency

The underlying goal is not understanding, but reaction. These systems optimize for time-on-platform, not user well-being or cognitive autonomy. Anger, sadness, tribal validation, fear, and parasocial attachment are all equally useful inputs. Through this lens, the algorithm is less an intelligent system and more an industrialized Skinner box: an operant conditioning engine powered by data extraction.

By removing the need for interpretive complexity and relying instead on scalable, binary psychological manipulation, companies minimize operational costs while maximizing monetizable engagement.

5. Black-Box Mythology and Cognitive Deference

Compounding this problem is the opacity of these systems. The “black-box” nature of proprietary algorithms fosters a mythos of sophistication. Users, unaware of the relatively simple statistical methods in use, ascribe higher-order reasoning or consciousness to systems that function through brute-force pattern amplification.

This deference becomes part of the trap: once convinced the algorithm “knows them,” users are less likely to question its manipulations and more likely to conform to its outputs, completing the feedback circuit.

6. Conclusion

The supposed sophistication of engagement algorithms is a carefully sustained illusion. By funneling user behavior into binary categories and exploiting universally predictable psychological responses, platforms maintain the appearance of intelligent personalization while operating through reductive, low-cost mechanisms. Human cognition —biased toward pattern recognition and overestimation of self-uniqueness— completes the illusion without external effort. The result is a scalable system of emotional manipulation that masquerades as individualized insight.

In essence, the algorithm does not understand the user; it understands that the user wants to be understood, and it weaponizes that desire for profit.

[xerith-42]

I know it seems like striking on social media might not do enough, but as someone who has been outright obsessively using the internet since I was a child to the point that it is literally woven in my soul, been active and involved in online activism for about five years, and been using social media as marketing for about the same amount of time, I can confidently say that

THIS FUCKING WORKS!!

People base their entire businesses on their success on social media. They look at trending topics on twitter and don't see bite sized chunks of culture distilled to its finest and worst moments, they see market data! They don't see you as a single human being, they see you as a data point among thousands run through a probably AI assisted system that's prone to fucking up, that determines everything they're going to do.

How they're going to advertise, who they target it with it, what the general public wants. Every single major corporation uses data from social media websites to do this. Every. Single. One. Social media is a lot of things, and one of those things is a tool for business and politics. We know for a fact that social media politics bleeds out into the real world very fucking quickly.

Even if you can't strike financially, even if you have to go to work or school to survive, striking on social media is one of the best things you can do. Even if it's quiet. People are going to notice when thousands upon thousands of users across various sites go completely dark, and even more when some of them start getting real fucking loud about this. The US Capitalist Infused Government loves sweeping war crimes under the rug once they think the general public has forgotten about their atrocities and fallen into complacency. This system has been doing this for literal centuries.

Social media is just the newest and most expansive form we as a species have developed in the ongoing invention of ways to express our thoughts about things. It's the weirdest one, that's for sure, but executives pay attention to it. They don't often seek to understand it beyond a very basic level, because as I said, they view us as numbers on a screen, not as multifaceted incredibly and deeply fucked human beings. They do not seek to understand us on a personal level unless they think the cost of it won't outweigh the potential profit.

Pattern recognition is the tool of the moment. Machine Learning. Gathering endless amounts of data so we can replicate human existence through machines. You may think that social media strikes are ineffective because social media is just on the internet and it's "not real", but it is real! You are really doing stuff! You are contributing! Even if you're just lurking! Basic amounts of engagement can make a huge impact in a busted algorithm. Maybe you're not someone who would ever be drafted into an actual war-zone due to physical or mental health conditions, but you are probably a part of a key demographic of people that businesses are absolutely hungry for.

The budding adult has always been the target of greedy capitalists basically since this system was established and continued to get worse over time. The stage of your life when you are in the age range of 18-25 is an incredibly important transitional period, followed by a transitional period every six months until you lose sense of what six months even is because you haven't been happy in eight, and if you're in the 18-25 range currently, you got extra fucked by the pandemic. The world is in a turbulent stage and we are at the center of all of it and have been since 2001. Every single social media marketing expert will tell you the 18-25 demographic of social media users is a target demographic, because they are the most prone to extremes due to a life chock full of them.

We have to remember to be human, but we have to also know how to speak their language. They just see us as numbers? Let's show them some fucking numbers. Make posts about Gaza trend on every platform you have your hands on. Even if it's just liking posts, that gives them a slight boost in the algorithm. Commenting on posts is especially important on sites like Twitter and Instagram. But across every site the most important thing to do is reblog/retweet/share/send/copy link, whatever it is for that site, it is the biggest thing that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE looks at.

From a humble artist to a head of marketing at a billion dollar corporation about to have a meeting with a barely over 21 intern about how they need to run the twitter account, to said intern bumbling their way through adulthood with a job they only feel they're good at because they've been using social media since Skype was invented. We need to be loud, we need to make sure this can't be ignored, we can't sweep this under the rug. Mass media, especially coming out of the West, has been trying to censor, de-sanitize, and keep this issue quiet.

DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE SILENCED

There are tens of thousands of DEAD CHILDREN who have been BOMBED while in CIVILIAN AREAS and that is a FUCKING WAR CRIME.

THIS IS A GENOCIDE

Say that as many times as you can. Do not let it be ignored. A silent populous is a complacent one. Use your voice, even as small as it may seem. Make noise. Be loud. Be annoying. Don't let this be ignored. Talk about it everywhere you go. Do not let this be ignored.

Sometimes even we get disconnected from the real people around us. We base our sense of worth as a person based on the numbers going up or down but instead of developing a gambling addiction we just got angry about it but still fall into it because of cultural conditioning. But even if you only have let's say, completely random example, 70 followers. And only a small percent of them will see your post. Let's say maybe 20 on average, 30 on a good day, and even higher based on the machinations of fate. That's still 20 people who took time out of their day to read something you wrote, process something you created, share a part of your experience of living.

And likely they felt compelled to share it too, therefore increasing the spread of people who feel your influence. 20 people may not seem like a lot, but that has a major impact. Now imagine posts into the hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions. Those aren't just numbers. Each and every single one of those is just another person who might have reblogged a post because someone they like shared it, or because they wanted to spread its message, and that simple act causes a single post to have massive waves of effects from simple ripples.

Don't let yourself be discouraged. Don't think your voice or your impact "isn't enough to matter." Everything counts.

Don't let this be ignored. Don't become complacent. Know that every little thing counts, and to do every little thing you can.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

I'm coming to Minneapolis! This Sunday (Oct 15): Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Monday (Oct 16): Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Enshittification isn't merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can't be reconfigured in an eyeblink the that that purely digital services can.

A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

I call this process "twiddling": tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the system into an endlessly shifting quagmire where neither users nor business customers can ever be sure whether they're getting a fair deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Social media platforms are compulsive twiddlers. They use endless variation to lure in – and then lock in – publishers, with the goal of converting these standalone businesses into commodity suppliers who are dependent on the platform, who can then be charged rent to reach the users who asked to hear from them.

Facebook designed this playbook. First, it lured in end-users by promising them a good deal: "Unlike Myspace, which spies on you from asshole to appetite, Facebook is a privacy-respecting site that will never, ever spy on you. Simply sign up, tell us everyone who matters to you, and we'll populate a feed with everything they post for public consumption":

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

Once its users were locked in, Facebook turned to advertisers and said, "Remember when we told these rubes we'd never spy on them? It was a lie. We spy on them with every hour that God sends, and we'll sell you access to that data in the form of dirt-cheap targeted ads."

Then Facebook went to the publishers and said, "Remember when we told these suckers that we'd only show them the things they asked to see? Total lie. Post short excerpts from your content and links back to your websites and we'll nonconsensually cram them into the eyeballs of people who never asked to see them. It's a free, high-value traffic funnel for your own site, bringing monetizable users right to your door."

Now, Facebook had to find a way to lock in those publishers. To do this, it had to twiddle. By tiny increments, Facebook deprioritized publishers' content, forcing them to make their excerpts grew progressively longer. As with gig workers, the digital flexibility of Facebook gave it lots of leeway here. Some publishers sensed the excerpts they were being asked to post were a substitute for visiting their sites – and not an enticement – and drew down their posting to Facebook.

When that happened, Facebook could twiddle in the publisher's favor, giving them broader distribution for shorter excerpts, then, once the publisher returned to the platform, Facebook drew down their traffic unless they started posting longer pieces. Twiddling lets platforms play users and business-customers like a fish on a line, giving them slack when they fight, then reeling them in when they tire.

Once Facebook converted a publisher to a commodity supplier to the platform, it reeled the publishers in. First, it deprioritized publishers' posts when they had links back to the publisher's site (under the pretext of policing "clickbait" and "malicious links"). Then, it stopped showing publishers' content to their own subscribers, extorting them to pay to "boost" their posts in order to reach people who had explicitly asked to hear from them.

For users, this meant that their feeds were increasingly populated with payola-boosted content from advertisers and pay-to-play publishers who paid Facebook's Danegeld to reach them. A user will only spend so much time on Facebook, and every post that Facebook feeds that user from someone they want to hear from is a missed opportunity to show them a post from someone who'll pay to reach them.

Here, too, twiddling lets Facebook fine-tune its approach. If a user starts to wean themself off Facebook, the algorithm (TM) can put more content the user has asked to see in the feed. When the user's participation returns to higher levels, Facebook can draw down the share of desirable content again, replacing it with monetizable content. This is done minutely, behind the scenes, automatically, and quickly. In any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

This is the final stage of enshittification: withdrawing surpluses from end-users and business customers, leaving behind the minimum homeopathic quantum of value for each needed to keep them locked to the platform, generating value that can be extracted and diverted to platform shareholders.

But this is a brittle equilibrium to maintain. The difference between "God, I hate this place but I just can't leave it" and "Holy shit, this sucks, I'm outta here" is razor-thin. All it takes is one privacy scandal, one livestreamed mass-shooting, one whistleblower dump, and people bolt for the exits. This kicks off a death-spiral: as users and business customers leave, the platform's shareholders demand that they squeeze the remaining population harder to make up for the loss.

One reason this gambit worked so well is that it was a long con. Platform operators and their investors have been willing to throw away billions convincing end-users and business customers to lock themselves in until it was time for the pig-butchering to begin. They financed expensive forays into additional features and complementary products meant to increase user lock-in, raising the switching costs for users who were tempted to leave.

For example, Facebook's product manager for its "photos" product wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to lay out a strategy of enticing users into uploading valuable family photos to the platform in order to "make switching costs very high for users," who would have to throw away their precious memories as the price for leaving Facebook:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The platforms' patience paid off. Their slow ratchets operated so subtly that we barely noticed the squeeze, and when we did, they relaxed the pressure until we were lulled back into complacency. Long cons require a lot of prefrontal cortex, the executive function to exercise patience and restraint.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, a man who seems to have been born without a prefrontal cortex, who has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that he lacks any restraint, patience or planning. Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick.

Where Zuckerberg played enshittification as a long game, Musk is bent on speedrunning it. He doesn't slice his users up with a subtle scalpel, he hacks away at them with a hatchet.

Musk inaugurated his reign by nonconsensually flipping every user to an algorithmic feed which was crammed with ads and posts from "verified" users whose blue ticks verified solely that they had $8 ($11 for iOS users). Where Facebook deployed substantial effort to enticing users who tired of eyeball-cramming feed decay by temporarily improving their feeds, Musk's Twitter actually overrode users' choice to switch back to a chronological feed by repeatedly flipping them back to more monetizable, algorithmic feeds.

Then came the squeeze on publishers. Musk's Twitter rolled out a bewildering array of "verification" ticks, each priced higher than the last, and publishers who refused to pay found their subscribers taken hostage, with Twitter downranking or shadowbanning their content unless they paid.

(Musk also squeezed advertisers, keeping the same high prices but reducing the quality of the offer by killing programs that kept advertisers' content from being published along Holocaust denial and open calls for genocide.)

Today, Musk continues to squeeze advertisers, publishers and users, and his hamfisted enticements to make up for these depredations are spectacularly bad, and even illegal, like offering advertisers a new kind of ad that isn't associated with any Twitter account, can't be blocked, and is not labeled as an ad:

https://www.wired.com/story/xs-sneaky-new-ads-might-be-illegal/

Of course, Musk has a compulsive bullshitter's contempt for the press, so he has far fewer enticements for them to stay. Quite the reverse: first, Musk removed headlines from link previews, rendering posts by publishers that went to their own sites into stock-art enigmas that generated no traffic:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/05/x-twitter-strips-headlines-new-links-why-elon-musk

Then he jumped straight to the end-stage of enshittification by announcing that he would shadowban any newsmedia posts with links to sites other than Twitter, "because there is less time spent if people click away." Publishers were advised to "post content in long form on this platform":

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

Where a canny enshittifier would have gestured at a gaslighting explanation ("we're shadowbanning posts with links because they might be malicious"), Musk busts out the motto of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

All this has the effect of highlighting just how little residual value there is on the platform for publishers, and tempts them to bolt for the exits. Six months ago, NPR lost all patience with Musk's shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they've revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR's traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

NPR's Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk's enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR's ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion, a shell game Musk played on publishers like NPR in a bid to get them to buy a five-figure iridium checkmark or even a six-figure titanium one.

On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero – not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

Boing Boing had the good fortune to have attracted a sizable audience before the advent of siloed platforms, and a large portion of that audience came to the site directly, rather than following us on social media. I knew that, starting a new platform from scratch, I wouldn't have that luxury. My audience would come from social media, and it would be up to me to convert readers into people who followed me on platforms I controlled – where neither they nor I could be held to ransom.

I embraced a strategy called POSSE: Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. With POSSE, the permalink and native habitat for your material is a site you control (in my case, a WordPress blog with all the telemetry, logging and surveillance disabled). Then you repost that content to other platforms – mostly social media – with links back to your own site:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

There are a lot of automated tools to help you with this, but the platforms have gone to great lengths to break or neuter them. Musk's attack on Twitter's legendarily flexible and powerful API killed every automation tool that might help with this. I was lucky enough to have a reader – Loren Kohnfelder – who coded me some python scripts that automate much of the process, but POSSE remains a very labor-intensive and error-prone methodology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

And of all the feeds I produce – email, RSS, Discourse, Medium, Tumblr, Mastodon – none is as labor-intensive as Twitter's. It is an unforgiving medium to begin with, and Musk's drawdown of engineering support has made it wildly unreliable. Many's the time I've set up 20+ posts in a thread, only to have the browser tab reload itself and wipe out all my work.

But I stuck with Twitter, because I have a half-million followers, and to the extent that I reach them there, I can hope that they will follow the permalinks to Pluralistic proper and switch over to RSS, or email, or a daily visit to the blog.

But with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience.

All this raises the question of what can or should be done about Twitter. One possible regulatory response would be to impose an "End-To-End" rule on the service, requiring that Twitter deliver posts from willing senders to willing receivers without interfering in them. End-To-end is the bedrock of the internet (one of its incarnations is Net Neutrality) and it's a proven counterenshittificatory force:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Despite what you may have heard, "freedom of reach" is freedom of speech: when a platform interposes itself between willing speakers and their willing audiences, it arrogates to itself the power to control what we're allowed to say and who is allowed to hear us:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

We have a wide variety of tools to make a rule like this stick. For one thing, Musk's Twitter has violated innumerable laws and consent decrees in the US, Canada and the EU, which creates a space for regulators to impose "conduct remedies" on the company.

But there's also existing regulatory authorities, like the FTC's Section Five powers, which enable the agency to act against companies that engage in "unfair and deceptive" acts. When Twitter asks you who you want to hear from, then refuses to deliver their posts to you unless they pay a bribe, that's both "unfair and deceptive":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

But that's only a stopgap. The problem with Twitter isn't that this important service is run by the wrong mercurial, mediocre billionaire: it's that hundreds of millions of people are at the mercy of any foolish corporate leader. While there's a short-term case for improving the platforms, our long-term strategy should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

To make that a reality, we could also impose a "Right To Exit" on the platforms. This would be an interoperability rule that would require Twitter to adopt Mastodon's approach to server-hopping: click a link to export the list of everyone who follows you on one server, click another link to upload that file to another server, and all your followers and followees are relocated to your new digs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

A Twitter with the Right To Exit would exert a powerful discipline even on the stunted self-regulatory centers of Elon Musk's brain. If he banned a reporter for publishing truthful coverage that cast him in a bad light, that reporter would have the legal right to move to another platform, and continue to reach the people who follow them on Twitter. Publishers aghast at having the headlines removed from their Twitter posts could go somewhere less slipshod and still reach the people who want to hear from them on Twitter.

And both Right To Exit and End-To-End satisfy the two prime tests for sound internet regulation: first, they are easy to administer. If you want to know whether Musk is permitting harassment on his platform, you have to agree on a definition of harassment, determine whether a given act meets that definition, and then investigate whether Twitter took reasonable steps to prevent it.

By contrast, administering End-To-End merely requires that you post something and see if your followers receive it. Administering Right To Exit is as simple as saying, "OK, Twitter, I know you say you gave Cory his follower and followee file, but he says he never got it. Just send him another copy, and this time, CC the regulator so we can verify that it arrived."

Beyond administration, there's the cost of compliance. Requiring Twitter to police its users' conduct also requires it to hire an army of moderators – something that Elon Musk might be able to afford, but community-supported, small federated servers couldn't. A tech regulation can easily become a barrier to entry, blocking better competitors who might replace the company whose conduct spurred the regulation in the first place.

End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs more than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open ActivityPub standard.

It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification. This is the Great Enshittening, a moment of universal, end-stage platform decay. As the platforms burn, calls to address the fires grow louder and harder for policymakers to resist. But not all solutions to platform decay are created equal. Some solutions will perversely enshrine the dominance of platforms, help make them both too big to fail and too big to jail.

Musk has flagrantly violated so many rules, laws and consent decrees that he has accidentally turned Twitter into the perfect starting point for a program of platform reform and platform evacuation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: JD Lasica (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_%283018710552%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[feminist-space]

Excerpts:

"The convenience of instant answers that LLMs provide can encourage passive consumption of information, which may lead to superficial engagement, weakened critical thinking skills, less deep understanding of the materials, and less long-term memory formation [8]. The reduced level of cognitive engagement could also contribute to a decrease in decision-making skills and in turn, foster habits of procrastination and "laziness" in both students and educators [13].

Additionally, due to the instant availability of the response to almost any question, LLMs can possibly make a learning process feel effortless, and prevent users from attempting any independent problem solving. By simplifying the process of obtaining answers, LLMs could decrease student motivation to perform independent research and generate solutions [15]. Lack of mental stimulation could lead to a decrease in cognitive development and negatively impact memory [15]. The use of LLMs can lead to fewer opportunities for direct human-to-human interaction or social learning, which plays a pivotal role in learning and memory formation [16].

Collaborative learning as well as discussions with other peers, colleagues, teachers are critical for the comprehension and retention of learning materials. With the use of LLMs for learning also come privacy and security issues, as well as plagiarism concerns (7]. Yang et al. [17] conducted a study with high school students in a programming course. The experimental group used ChatGPT to assist with learning programming, while the control group was only exposed to traditional teaching methods. The results showed that the experimental group had lower flow experience, self-efficacy, and learning performance compared to the control group.

Academic self-efficacy, a student's belief in their "ability to effectively plan, organize, and execute academic tasks"

', also contributes to how LLMs are used for learning [18]. Students with

low self-efficacy are more inclined to rely on Al, especially when influenced by academic stress

[18]. This leads students to prioritize immediate Al solutions over the development of cognitive and creative skills. Similarly, students with lower confidence in their writing skills, lower

"self-efficacy for writing" (SEWS), tended to use ChatGPT more extensively, while higher-efficacy students were more selective in Al reliance [19]. We refer the reader to the meta-analysis [20] on the effect of ChatGPT on students' learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking."

"Recent empirical studies reveal concerning patterns in how LLM-powered conversational search systems exacerbate selective exposure compared to conventional search methods. Participants engaged in more biased information querying with LLM-powered conversational search, and an opinionated LLM reinforcing their views exacerbated this bias [63]. This occurs because LLMS are in essence "next token predictors" that optimize for most probable outputs, and thus can potentially be more inclined to provide consonant information than traditional information system algorithms [63]. The conversational nature of LLM interactions compounds this effect, as users can engage in multi-turn conversations that progressively narrow their information exposure. In LLM systems, the synthesis of information from multiple sources may appear to provide diverse perspectives but can actually reinforce existing biases through algorithmic selection and presentation mechanisms.

The implications for educational environments are particularly significant, as echo chambers can fundamentally compromise the development of critical thinking skills that form the foundation of quality academic discourse. When students rely on search systems or language models that systematically filter information to align with their existing viewpoints, they might miss opportunities to engage with challenging perspectives that would strengthen their analytical capabilities and broaden their intellectual horizons. Furthermore, the sophisticated nature of these algorithmic biases means that a lot of users often remain unaware of the information gaps in their research, leading to overconfident conclusions based on incomplete evidence. This creates a cascade effect where poorly informed arguments become normalized in academic and other settings, ultimately degrading the standards of scholarly debate and undermining the educational mission of fostering independent, evidence-based reasoning."

"In summary, the Brain-only group's connectivity suggests a state of increased internal coordination, engaging memory and creative thinking (manifested as theta and delta coherence across cortical regions). The Engine group, while still cognitively active, showed a tendency toward more focal connectivity associated with handling external information (e.g. beta band links to visual-parietal areas) and comparatively less activation of the brain's long-range memory circuits. These findings are in line with literature: tasks requiring internal memory amplify low-frequency brain synchrony in frontoparietal networks [77], whereas outsourcing information (via internet search) can reduce the load on these networks and alter attentional dynamics. Notably, prior studies have found that practicing internet search can reduce activation in memory-related brain areas [831, which dovetails with our observation of weaker connectivity in those regions for Search Engine group. Conversely, the richer connectivity of Brain-only group may reflect a cognitive state akin to that of high performers in creative or memory tasks, for instance, high creativity has been associated with increased fronto-occipital theta connectivity and intra-hemispheric synchronization in frontal-temporal circuits [81], patterns we see echoed in the Brain-only condition."

"This correlation between neural connectivity and behavioral quoting failure in LLM group's participants offers evidence that:

1. Early Al reliance may result in shallow encoding.

LLM group's poor recall and incorrect quoting is a possible indicator that their earlier essays were not internally integrated, likely due to outsourced cognitive processing to the LLM.

2. Withholding LLM tools during early stages might support memory formation.

Brain-only group's stronger behavioral recall, supported by more robust EEG connectivity, suggests that initial unaided effort promoted durable memory traces, enabling more effective reactivation even when LLM tools were introduced later.

Metacognitive engagement is higher in the Brain-to-LLM group.

Brain-only group might have mentally compared their past unaided efforts with tool-generated suggestions (as supported by their comments during the interviews), engaging in self-reflection and elaborative rehearsal, a process linked to executive control and semantic integration, as seen in their EEG profile.

The significant gap in quoting accuracy between reassigned LLM and Brain-only groups was not merely a behavioral artifact; it is mirrored in the structure and strength of their neural connectivity. The LLM-to-Brain group's early dependence on LLM tools appeared to have impaired long-term semantic retention and contextual memory, limiting their ability to reconstruct content without assistance. In contrast, Brain-to-LLM participants could leverage tools more strategically, resulting in stronger performance and more cohesive neural signatures."

[luulapants]

Do you have any tips to be more punk in 2025 specifically for minors?

Hey, great question! Let's take a look at our list and see what still applies and what we can flip around for you.

Cut fast fashion - Still applies! Try clothing swaps with friends.

Cut subscriptions Analyze your media consumption - Do you tend to play phone games that are psychologically manipulative? Are algorithms taking you to content that makes you upset? Track your screen time, think about what's being sold to you, and resist only consuming the media that is fed to you.

Green your community self - Forget touching grass, find ways to touch dirt. Spend time outside in nature. Go for hikes, look at trees, track how plants and animals change over the seasons. You're part of the natural world, so go connect with it!

Be kind - Still applies! Try handing out more compliments.

Intervene - Still applies, and especially applies to bullies, including teachers. This can be as simple as saying, "That was a really messed up thing to say. I think you owe X an apology."

Get closer to your food - Still applies! Try packing your lunch.

Use opensource software Reject Web 2.0 - Before you try to learn Linux, people your age need to start by learning some basic computer and coding skills. My generation was given computer classes and had social media that encouraged custom coding. Yours has been deprived of this education and given prepackaged web content. Reject AI. Right click + inspect element + fuck around. Learn Raspberry Pi. Become the cyberpunk hacker you want to see in the world.

Make less trash - Still applies! If mom won't let you start a compost in the backyard, propose starting one at school!

Get involved in local school politics - Know what's going on with your school board, with school administration. Start an underground, uncensored school newspaper with the real dirt.

DIY > fashion - High school is where a lot of adults learned their bad habits about keeping up with appearance/fashion demands. Refuse to buy in now and make homemade the new cool.

Ditch Google - Still applies! And also check your app settings to see if you have apps with unnecessary permissions.

Forage - Still applies!

Volunteer - Still applies! There might be fewer opportunities for minors, but you'll never know until you ask. Don't be afraid to be the only young person at the volunteer session.

Help your neighbors classmates - Offer to study with students who are struggling. Become someone people can trust to tell if their home situation is difficult. If you have friends who don't get enough to eat at home, bring them home for dinner. Check on people.

Fix stuff - Still applies! This can be a fun activity with friends, too. Let's all hang out and see if we can fix this busted stereo!

Mix up your transit - Still applies! Is taking the bus considered lame at your school? Do it anyway.

Engage in the arts - Still applies! Pay attention to art events that your classmates are putting on. Go to the school play - or join! Stop in the art classrooms to see what people are working on.

Go to the library - Still applies, public and school libraries! Talk to the librarians - they know things. Find out if there are after school programs you can take advantage of.

Listen local - Even more local! Stop by the band room after school to listen to practice. Does someone in your school have a band? Listen to them, cheer them on! Start a band! The great thing about punk music is that you can be really, really awful and still sound punk as hell.

Buy local Barter local - Lots of young folks don't have much control over or access to money, but that doesn't mean you and your classmates can't engage in barter. Figure out what you have to offer that other people might want, and trade for stuff you want. I used to cut hair and pierce ears in exchange for weed and rides to the mall. Maybe you can sew a friend's jacket in exchange for them bringing you a homemade lunch.

Become unmarketable - Still applies! PLEASE do this.

Use cash Steal ethically - Before engaging in shoplifting, make sure you know who you're stealing from! Stealing from Walmart is morally correct. Stealing from a family-owned grocery, a local coop, or a local artist? That fucking sucks, dude. Don't do it.

Give what you can - And only what you can. We ask a godawful lot from teens. You're in school all day, you're doing extracurriculars and maybe working and doing homework. You probably don't have a lot of money. You probably don't have a lot of time. But maybe you can bring your elderly neighbor's trash cans up from the street. Find the small actions that you have space for.

Talk about wages - PLEASE! If you have a job, this applies to you even more. Why? Because the adults working at your minimum wage job probably can't afford to be rabble rousers, but what do you have to lose except your shitty part-time Panera job?? A teenager who doesn't actually need their job to live has the opportunity to be the voice of truth in any workplace.

Think about wealthflow Resist indoctrination - Education systems are being gutted. Algorithms are feeding us misinformation. Cocomelon probably gave you ADHD or some shit - Jesus. It's a mess. Do what you can to practice critical thinking, expand your literacy, read stuff that seems boring. Start a book club or philosophy club with your friends. Ask who's profiting from a given situation. Resist knee-jerk reactions. Becoming an educated, thoughtful person is one of the greatest acts of resistance a young person today can engage in.

[mariacallous]

One sunny afternoon in May, a century-old power plant in Brooklyn was buzzing—not with electricity, but with hundreds of creatives congregating at the Black Zine Fair. Handmade booklets piled up on table after table, forming vast paper topographies of politics and activism and culture. Marginalized groups in skating! Fictional characters “that probably made me queer”! Someone else presented zines dedicated to all the TV shows they had recorded onto VHS. Still more tables hosted zine assembly. Everyone seemed to have stickers for sale. The scene evoked New York in the 1980s or ’90s, when the city was home to a thriving DIY zine culture built on late nights at Kinko’s. Only now many of the zine makers swapped online handles along with their analog wares.

For over a decade, social media platforms have served as cultural loci, and in many ways still do, but recent events have deepened the notion that digital spaces aren’t safe or effective for everyone. Once beloved platforms like Twitter have been overtaken by white supremacist speech. Meta now allows users to call gay and trans people mentally ill. TikTok has been on the verge of being banned in the US for years now. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security has announced its plans to screen the social media of immigrants and visa applicants. What’s next? Even if the bigotry and surveillance don’t bother you, major platforms often feel like content wells for advertisers and AI scavengers, picking through the detritus of influencers chasing engagement. Breaking through seems impossible.

For those looking for alternatives, zines have taken on new importance as a way to spread ideas outside the easy reach of unfriendly eyes and unhelpful algorithms. Organizer Mariame Kaba, who cofounded the Black Zine Fair in 2024, says she’s seen lots more interest in the medium lately, especially from Gen Z. About 1,200 people attended the fair this year, and similar gatherings and workshops are happening around the world. Online, people who want to talk about abortion access or queer rights or the war in Gaza are “feeling like they can’t say certain things,” Kaba says. Zines allow them to “share personal experiences, to make connections with other people, to fight censorship, to evade the surveillance that's consistent and constant when you are on digital platforms.”

With the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers limiting access to certain kinds of health care in the US, for example, zines about DIY health care for trans people or pamphlets about self-managed abortions could become even more prevalent. “If they start criminalizing that kind of information, how will you access that information, if not literally somebody passing you a pamphlet or a flyer or a zine?” Kaba asks. “For folks who are on the left, we better figure out how we're going to transmit information about important things to each other that is not using social media.”

Zines, and their predecessors, have a long history of political and cultural impact, particularly in the US. In the 18th and 19th centuries, pamphlets helped spread messages about the abolitionist movement. LGBTQ+ people made paper booklets to share information during the AIDS crisis. Riot grrrls used them to spread feminist messages in the ’90s, the last time zines saw a huge boom.

Graphic novelist and documentary filmmaker James Spooner was just a high schooler when he stumbled upon his first zine: an anarcha-feminist zine called “Aim Your Dick” that Mimi Nguyen made in 1993. “It introduced me to the idea that a teenager could have a voice that the world outside of school would be interested in hearing,” Spooner says. He quickly made a zine of his own.

But within a decade of Spooner’s discovery, the internet reached the mainstream, and zines were drowned out by digital culture. Diehards kept making paper handouts, but most people with ideas or messages to share went on social media. The prospect of a digital public square where anyone could broadcast their thoughts to the world was new and exciting. Since then, however, Americans’ perceptions of social media have darkened.

Zines, meanwhile, are seeing a resurgence, popping up in museum collections and, in at least one instance, online comics. They are taking on new forms, modified by a generation seeking to make something that won’t go the way of Tumblr.

“By producing physical, tangible objects that don’t exist on the internet, you can circumvent or avoid feeding into that machine,” says Kyle Myles, a photographer who sells zines out of his Baltimore shop. “I think a lot of people worry that when they share things on, say, Instagram, suddenly it’s the property of Mark Zuckerberg or Meta.”

Last year at the Black Zine Fair, Jennifer White-Johnson, a designer known for creating the Black Disabled Lives Matter symbol, presented a zine-making workshop; for this year’s event, held in May, they distributed copies of “A Black Neurodivergent Artist’s Manifesto.” (It sold out.) Several years ago, after their son was diagnosed with autism, White-Johnson created an advocacy photo zine called “KnoxRoxs.” They’ve often organized gatherings to create zines with other caregivers for autistic kids. Making zines, White-Johnson says, provides “a powerful act of collective liberation and a radical practice of self and community care.”

White-Johnson’s zine was one of many at this year’s fair focused on solidarity and social justice. Several were historical, like Kaba’s “Arrested at the Library: Policing the Stacks” about the history of law enforcement’s presence in libraries. Some zines were structured like newspapers; some took the form of grade school art. Others channeled the format’s earlier punk aesthetics.

Many zines bridged the gap between analog and digital. An independent publisher called Haters Cafe presented “10 Anarchist Theses on Palestine Solidarity in the United States,” one of several works also hosted on the publisher’s website. One of its creators, who asked not to be identified, tells WIRED that while the internet has allowed Haters’ zines to spread far, their somewhat untraceable physical forms appeal to people who are concerned about repression. “In certain spaces, I cover my face; I wear a mask,” they say. Anonymous zines serve a similar function. “We’re trying to broaden cultural distaste for surveillance.”

Which is to say, modern zine makers aren’t anti-technology. They’re opposed to what often comes with its use. If anything, they’re incorporating analog creations into digital ones, like people who post about woodworking or knitting on Reddit.

Zines are taking hold in fields outside politics and culture, too. Like science. During the 2024 meeting in Mexico of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, a respected computational biologist named Pleuni Pennings did away with handing out a sedate paper containing her research and instead distributed a stylized zine, illustrated with hand-drawn diagrams and figures, to accompany her presentation on antimicrobial resistance.

Pennings says she hoped audience members would be inspired to show the zine to other people, like their colleagues, and spread her work that way. “I mean, that’s what we all want when we give a talk, right?”

Communication constantly evolves, along with the way people want to receive information. As social media replaced zines, the messages traveled farther, but their permanence dissipated. Friendster fizzled. Tumblr will never be what it was. Posts on X or TikTok get drowned in the churn of what’s trending or what platform owners want to boost. Handmade zines can last much longer. “Writing things down on paper has value,” Spooner says. “It’s more permanent.”

As fears of surveillance and authoritarianism grow, the zine community may provide a means to organize under the algorithmic radar, in a format less beholden to the whims of multibillion-dollar social media companies. A vision of the future copied from the past.

[heathermooch]

I really wish it was talked about more how exhausting it is to constantly have your phone selling your data on things that are so personal. My phone is listening in on my therapy appointments and getting Reels on depression. Speaking about how I’m afraid my cat may have cancer and being fed Tiktok video algorithm videos of people in hospice, their life before & after diagnosis, confessing to a friend how you’re starting to get physical effects from being overweight and now finding a slew of workout recommendations & finspo. I don’t get to be human, because there is an all-seeing group of numbers who are trying to recreate my human experience for me. Interspersed with Wegovy ads, Temu trash, the AI Coca Cola slop. It makes me and millions of other people feel alone. A product to a company I have no idea I was a line item more. Worthy only with my eyes, tracking every millisecond I watch a storytime about the worst day of someone’s life. This is not how life is supposed to be like. But hey, at least if I get more apathetic, I can be sold for another Better Help ad, self-conscious to be sold for a HelloFresh subscription, or if I’m lucky enough to be shown 15 minutes into scrolling, content from a friend so I can have the algorithm push a sponsored VRBO video of a cool experience to have with friends. Self-censorship like unalive or G@za just to get our points across so the platform can trick some corporation into believing it's a safe platform to sell on.

I’ve been deleting social media apps from my phone when I don’t use it. I “ask” apps to disable the location, microphone & camera access, which should never be a suggestion. I click “only necessary” cookies when visiting sites even if I have to press that button every time a new page loads on their domain. I avoid Facebook almost altogether due to its predilection for AI engagement bait. I stopped using Twitter last year after the rage bait & bot problem became apparent. I was asked by someone much younger than me why Tumblr feels like the old internet, and I said without really thinking about it, there isn’t a financial incentive for people to be upset with each other. And you know what, as poignant as it was, it made me realize why I’ve spent most of my time on Tumblr lately. Because I feel less like a product.

So yes, maybe it is harder to get a hold of me. Maybe I don’t post on social media like I used to. But I’m trying to find even the smallest modicum of control over and peace over a piece of technology I need for my livelihood. And I can’t believe, over 20 years after it’s mass public introduction, we still have lawmakers who feign ignorance on how the internet works to not enact true change in the US. All while the suicide rate for children rises, having thousands of professionals point to social media algorithms, just to be struck down by one billionaire cuck making a well-placed & timed donation. Say I'm preaching to the choir, talking to my echo chamber, but I'm not the one who coded the echo chamber.