We Live in a Different World Now
Scary developments, and a personal note.
Just over the last few weeks:
The head of U.S. public health canceled all mRNA vaccines, and most of us still don't know what shots we can get this fall. The current Department of Energy released a deeply anti-scientific report declaring that the climate crisis "appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed," and that "aggressive mitigation strategies could be more harmful than beneficial." TikTok hired a former IDF member as their new "hate speech manager." Official government agencies are scrubbing entire sections of the constitution from their websites. And... the president fired the country's labor statistics chief for sharing accurate jobs data.
It just keeps getting worse.
Meanwhile, Substack "accidentally" promoted openly white supremacist content on their platform, not long after raising $100 million in funding from rightwing investment firms like Andressen Horowitz. Their CEO, Marc Andreessen, has blasted DEI at universities and threatened to make them "pay the price." Andreessen also sits on Meta's board of directors. On a related note, Horowitz will be traveling to Israel soon to recruit "tech talent." Social media platforms increasingly refuse to moderate or "censor" outright Nazis on their platforms, but they'll censor everything else.
Meanwhile, governments are exploiting new age verification laws to restrict vast amounts of information online. Britain's new Online Safety Act has already pushed services including Reddit, Spotify, X, and YouTube to enact draconian policies, forcing users to upload personal documents just to access ordinary content that might look or sound too sensitive or serious for anyone under 18. That information includes protests, and sometimes even public health information.
The old world has vanished. In that world, we might've still felt somewhat safe from fascists. We might've been able to convince ourselves that everything would be okay, that we wouldn't lose everything.
Not anymore.
Some of us never really knew that old safety and comfort. The last six months have made it clear that we'll probably never get to experience it.
If you haven't yet, get off Google for anything personal. I'm even trying to move away from their authenticator app in favor of hard security keys. Get off Microsoft and any products they're affiliated with.
Nate Bear lists several things you can do to up your online security, and they overlap with steps I've mentioned. (He also recommends Brave, a browser that I was previously scorned for mentioning, but whatever...) These steps might not protect you indefinitely, but they're a good start and almost the bare minimum now.
On the personal front, I'm not sure it's wise for writers or content creators to put all their eggs in any one basket. If they're anything like me, they're pulling back from platforms like Substack, who look more likely to police "leftist" content than they are to even demonetize overtly fascist, white supremacist outlets. Some of us can already see the content they're privileging over there now. It's not hardhitting journalism or blunt thinkpieces. It's soft, aspirational lifestyle content.
I've been looking for the right word.
That word is nonthreatening.
I've taken a hard look at the publications doing well there, and there's a new theme. It's okay to share pictures of your hike through the mountains. It's okay to post about yoga routines. It's okay to post about personal finance. It's okay to post about life lessons, as long as you don't mention "social justice." For now, they seem to have grandfathered big voices into their new algorithms. But if you're not important enough, good luck talking about anything you might actually care about.
Someone like Heather Cox Richardson or Brian Tyler Cohen can still get thousands of likes on a post, but that's nothing compared to the inspirational lifestyle content I'm seeing on there now. This stuff looks new, and it's taking over the platform.
You can whip off something about the virtues of boredom and long walks, and if it speaks to the techie class, it'll get 20K likes easy.
All of this fits. Tech platforms are consolidating their grip on free speech. As one Substacker wrote, the administration is leveraging every tool at their disposal to impose limits and restrictions on content without it looking too obvious, using carrots and sticks with social media companies to start promoting content that doesn't challenge their propaganda, but instead promotes lifestyle porn.
I'm going to tough it out as long as possible. Meanwhile, I'm pausing my plans to ease back into Substack exclusively. The recent developments are giving us a lot to think about. I'm planning to continue publishing on both platforms. I anticipate leaning more on Ghost. They recently rolled out several updates to their platform, including the beginnings of a new social media ecosystem.
So, I'm staying on Ghost.
I'm going to take my content out from behind the paywall, and we're going to see how things go. I'm going to keep writing about public health, the climate crisis, and collapse. I won't be obeying anyone or anything in advance.
You can still find me on Substack. I won't be closing that down unless things get real bad. This will probably cause readers some frustration, and I'm with you. I despise having to run publications on different platforms. It would be nice if the platforms themselves would stop gatekeeping and policing content under varying excuses, while claiming to promote free speech. Almost none of them do.
I'm eager to know everyone's thoughts on all this.
I'll say it one more time. It's more important than ever to support independent writers. The world is closing in on us, and we need each other. If you've been supporting independent writers, give yourself a pat on the back. It might not feel like it, but you're doing a lot to combat fascism. Fascist ideas thrive in environments filled with misinformation. That's how we lost so much so fast.
I'm not giving up.
I'm here.
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Jessica Wildfire
