I'd like to reach more people with Tech Reclaimers and with the Opt Out Project, which I suspect means meeting people where they're at (Insta, Tiktok, YTshorts, Substack). So I'm experimenting with ideas and formats in ways that allow me to maintain control over my data and antagonism (read: revulsion) to big tech at the same time. Hence some new shorties which I'm putting on @loops and some other experimenting with mainstream tech.

Taking my first tentative steps into observing and learning about these platforms from the perpsective of both a producer and a content consumer, I am literally reeling over what I am learning. As someone who has been off algorithmic systems -- 15 years for Google, 10 years for Facebook, 5 years for Twitter -- I am totally unprepared for this. The degree to which both producers and users/swipers/content-consumers integrate the #algorithm into their interactions with content is insane. Planning, producing, swiping, consuming ... it is all beyond absurdist to me.

I literally cannot get my brain to think this way. I can't even follow these videos. Sometimes I don't even know what they are!

I got on TikTok for about one minute and in the 2 seconds it took for my brain to process what I was seeing, "the algorithm learned from my preferences" and started showing me more stuff I couldn't even process and really didn't like.

Now I understand what the #Luddites mean when they chant that they must "free the iPad babies." And why people think they have put so much time into the system giving them what they want that they are proud of it.

I suspect that with everyone so literally addicted to and incorporating algorithmic preferences into their very lived experiences, #AI is just more of the same. Personalization is going to feel like an achievement instead of a ploy.

I am figuring out how to take action and intervene effectively... but in the meanwhile I can't shape this devastating feeling. Not that I'm old, not that the way I'm raising my children to be conscientious and information literate is out of date, not that I'm out of touch. Not even that, only on Mastodon would people read this status update all the way to the bottom.

More like, welp, #Democracy is doomed, folks.