Reclaiming our humanity and our online spaces

The online spaces we use to be with our friends and family, know what’s happening in the world, hear music from our favourite artists, do business, and more no longer serve these fundamental needs.

People crave authenticity, connection, and genuine community with other humans. Instead, they receive an increasing feed of engagement bait, time sinks, algorithmic gruel, and AI slop.

Look around, and you’ll see it everywhere. Even here on LinkedIn. Same with Spotify. Meta is the worst. It’s even destroying the American government from the inside out.

But let’s name the villain here. It isn’t technology. Tech is only a tool. At least for now, it requires human hands and heads to direct and deploy it.

The villain is the ideology that power and profit matter more than anything else. The billionaire broligarchs stopped caring about humans and humanity long ago, and it is almost impossible to be a human and see humanity in their products and services now.

It’s only worsening with the rise of generative AI and the collapse of any pretence that “we the people” matter. That’s what happens when they only look at growth metrics and not the underlying human need.

When these companies flood their products and services with cheap, generated content, they tell you that your needs do not matter and that who produces the things you consume is irrelevant.

Not true. Now more than ever, we need spaces for humans to exist and exercise our humanity.

The same technology can build and support this world. The people in power today chose a different path. We can choose a better one.