I was told that there needs to be a trailer for my podcast. So here it is, telling you that this show is about the intersection of tech and society. Because they do intersect a lot, don't they? Our personal and work lives are steeped in tech, our policies have a lot to do with tech. Governments are using gen-AI to write laws. Companies are firing employees to replace them with chatbots. We have to move past the phase where 'tech channel' meant mobile phone reviews. So there. If you didn't know what this podcast was about, now you know.

In our time, political propaganda and conspiracy theories are kissing cousins. One opens the gates and the other drags you in. The way they do this is not very imaginative and so it is possible to squitn and see how the process works.Below is a full transcript of the episode.Hi, and welcome to another video on this channel.My name is Vimoh and here we talk about atheism, Indian culture, popular misinformation, that sort of stuff. And I want to talk today, not about any specific creator or any specific bit of misinformation, but about something slightly meta.If you, if you zoom out and you look at this entire circus, what becomes apparent, a larger trend or a rather a larger pattern of behavior that becomes apparent when you zoom out and look at this. And we're going to call it the marketplace of secrets. Like, sounds very Harry Potter-ish, no? It's a market where you go and you find secrets everywhere being sold.My question has to do with the fact that the people who are selling you these secrets, where are they getting those secrets from? Imagine you're scrolling down your YouTube feed and you find a number of YouTube videos. One video says, secret meeting between political leaders that you need to know about right now. And you click on it and find out that there was actually no secret meeting. Somebody is just giving their opinion. And the reason you clicked on the thumbnail is because you thought there was something in this video that you could not find elsewhere. It turns out there is nothing in the video.The person who made the video and made the thumbnail knows that you are looking on YouTube for things that you cannot find elsewhere. And if they can appear to be the person who can give you those things, then they have your attention.You keep scrolling and you find someone saying, secrets of ancient Indian history that are being hidden from you according to some conspiracy by liberals. Now, in addition to finding information that you could not find elsewhere, you are actually being provided information. You are actually being offered information that someone does not want you to see. Someone is actively suppressing so that you may not find out about it.You are, by the way, in the dark about many things. You don't know many things and the reason you don't know them is because you really don't care about it. There are facts all over the world that you never looked into and that's all right because the world is quite large and you are one person and you have a set of interests and it is not your job to go look and find everything. So you are only going to look at things that are of interest to you. Right.So then you keep scrolling down your YouTube feed and you find another thumbnail. This one says secrets of ancient Indian history, culture, something, something that are being hidden from you by people that you don't like. Now it's become even more personal. Now, A, it's secret information that you don't know. B, it has been hidden from you and specifically hidden from you by the people who you don't like. Now, in addition to lack of knowledge, there is also anger. How dare these people keep this valuable information from me?The people who are keeping this information from me must be my enemies. In fact, I already think they're my enemies. This just reinforces it. And now when you click on this video and you watch something, you may still be disappointed with the content, but something else has happened. Something else has been triggered in your head. The bias, which you already had against certain people has been reinforced. And this reinforcement works on a subconscious level. You're not always aware of it. It's not as if you would have stopped disliking those people if you had not seen this video, but watching this video reinforced that and made you trust this person more because sure, maybe their video doesn't contain much good content, but at least they're on your side. They are working to help you. Sure, they got some facts wrong and they got some information wrong and they lied about some things, but they want what is good for you because they agree with you with regard to who your enemy is.Now, let me point out something else. Think about this from the point of view of the people who create these videos. What do they know about you? They know that you are a large chunk of the population, as in your religious background, your cultural background, your political biases make you a prime candidate for a certain kind of content. They want to give this content to you. But they also need to make sure that you will be interested in the content that they're giving you. So they create a box and they put stuff in this box.What is this box? This box, if you want to put a label on this box, this box will be labeled things you don't know or things they don't want you to know or things that are being kept secret from you. This is a broad label and a lot of subcategories may be also applied to this box. But broadly speaking, this is the label on the box that you should be aware of.Now they have a box and they need to put stuff in it. Where do they find stuff to put in this box so that you would be interested? They can do it in a number of ways. There are, there is more than one method using which they can get stuff to put in the box.The first method, the most honest method is to actually go and find stuff, you know, actually go do historical research, actually go do what academics do, actually go do what archaeologists do. Find out stuff that is true. but unknown and then put it in this box and package it and give it to you. This would be the honest thing to do.The second method is just make something up. Just imagine something, just create something out of thin air and call it a secret that people don't want you to know and put it in the box. The end result remains the same. You get an interesting thumbnail and a title and you don't have to do actual work in order to get that content. You just make s**t up and put it in the box and people will come and take it.The third method is probably used by people who have a little interest in being honest, but they're also extremely lazy. So they don't want to go out and do the hard work of bringing you actual secrets, but they do want your attention. So what they do is that they find average garden variety information that is common and well known to everyone. but they package it as if it is being hidden from you. They package it as a secret that some people don't want you to know.You will remember I mentioned earlier that you are not interested in everything and that's normal because you cannot be interested in everything. But if they found stuff out there that is boring to you, but they packaged it as if it was being hidden from you according to, as per a conspiracy of some sort, being enforced by people you already don't like, then you might become interested in it. For example, I might not be interested in termites from South America, but if someone made a video about termites, Here's a fact about termites from South America that is being hidden from you by the people you don't like. Then you might get interested, right?So that's what they do. They take average garden variety school and college level textbook stuff and they label it super secret conspiracy stuff that is being hidden from you and they put it in the box. Now they again have actual content, which is partially true even, but they have an interesting headline and title that goes with it.By the way, this is what is happening to a lot of engineering students these days. When they were in school, they had zero interest in history and under normal circumstances, they still would have zero interest in history. But since history is being marketed to them specifically, by labeling it secret information that those people don't want you to know or cultural pride that is being hidden by liberals, everyone has suddenly become very interested in what they consider to be history. They're not interested in history. They're being turned into consumers of propaganda by labeling propaganda as history.You know this problem we have with chips packets, right? There will be a packet of chips and there will be like four chips inside it and the rest of it will be air. So the goal is to make the packet look full. And if the thing you have to do in order to make the packet look full is fill it with air, then that's what they do. The point of the packet was chips, but there are no chips. There is mostly air. The packaging takes over the content.The thing that conspiracy theorists try to hide from you, the thing that conspiracy theorists actively try to hide from you, and I know I'm doing the same thing here, but this is to make a point. The thing that they hide from you is that their packaging is almost the entirety of their message. There is no actual content there. More than 90% of what they give you is fluff, emotional fluff that is designed to make you angry sad disappointed and quite possibly hateful after conspiracy theorists do this thing for a number of years after they have sent videos towards you where almost every single video is telling you that something's being hidden from you Something is being kept from you.Some people out there in the dark shadows are trying to hide information from you with the express intention of keeping you down or enslaving you or preventing you from having access to knowledge. After such videos, such content is sent your way every single day for years and years and years, if someone comes along and says, this is false, this is not true, your mind will be very quick to take that person and put them in the same folder of enemies from whom you are being told you need to be careful.So the conspiracy theorists entire toolkit is based on keeping you afraid. It is based on keeping you down. It is based on keeping you from accessing actual information. So in a very roundabout way, the thing that you should be afraid of, the thing that is keeping you from reality, the thing that is preventing you from having access to real knowledge about your culture and the world and science and everything... is the conspiracy theorist.This is a little like one of those movies where the hero has a friend whose job it is to protect the hero and the hero eventually finds out that it was the friend who was the real danger all along.A lot of you leave angry comments under my videos because you are deeply hurt by the things that I say about these conspiracy theorists. But I want you to think a little bit about what feelings history is supposed to evoke in you. Are you being made more knowledgeable? Are you being made more aware of facts? Or are you only being left with a feeling of anger and rage and disappointment? If all you get out of history is anger and sadness, then it is not history you're studying. You're studying propaganda.History is supposed to be an objective understanding of the past. And if after reading a history textbook, you don't feel like you know more or that you are more aware or you have a fuller understanding of the past and all you are left with is sadness and disappointment and anger and hate, then you need to reevaluate your priorities in life, my friend.That's it for this video. I hope this made sense. It was just an off-the-cuff observation, not really a deep dive into any single topic. Let me know if you are interested in more such meta-analysis of the market of secrets and I will do so. Until next time, take care of yourselves. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.fathomdaily.com

Hello friends.After a long time, there is a writing-related video. I thought I would occasionally make a video about writing because, you know, I am writing. This channel is a channel by a writer, so there should at least be some writing-related content on it.I put out a post in my posts tab—it used to be called a community tab, and things are confusing now. In the posts tab, you will find a post where I have asked people to send me their writing-related doubts, and I will do my best to answer them. I should warn you beforehand that a lot of what I'm about to say is how I do things. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to anything in life, and therefore you should take all of this with a pinch of salt. This is how I do things. This is what I think. This is not a universal, "do this and you will get X result" kind of thing.So, having gotten that out of the way, let's look at the first question that I'm going to address. The topic of this video is a question from Johnny Walker, one, two, three, four. And it goes like this:Some say the only way to learn writing is to just write. Others say it's a proper craft to be learned. So how do you learn writing? Or rather, I think what they want to ask is how to go about writing. How much attention should you pay to people who say the only way to learn writing is to learn writing, or that the only way to learn writing is to just write?First of all, you should be slightly suspicious of anyone who starts any piece of advice by saying "the only way," because it's probably the only way they have used, and it worked for them. I'm happy for them. But people should not give advice by saying, "This is the only way to do X," because life is a little more complicated than that. Art definitely is a lot more complicated than that.So let us focus on the two elements of this question. One is craft—the craft of learning how to write—and then there is just writing. Obviously, you have to do both of these things. You have to learn the craft of writing, and you have to just write the way a writer does. But perhaps it would be good if I started with the difference between art and craft.What is more important for you as a writer to focus on? Should you focus on the craft of writing, or should you focus on your art? Before I start, let me put it this way. If you announce that your intention is to go to Bhagalpur and you are going to do this on a bicycle, and you tell people, "Look here, I'm about to pick up this bicycle and go all the way to Bhagalpur," then people will come and check you out. People will come and see if you can do it.Craft is the ability to ride the bicycle. Art is making the journey and getting to Bhagalpur. If you pick up the bicycle and you pedal, and they see you go at least a few meters, then they know that you can get to Bhagalpur. They know that you have the ability to get to Bhagalpur. They know that you have the skills required to get all the way to Bhagalpur. If you pick up the bicycle and you cannot pedal and you fall down, it doesn't matter if you have the map to Bhagalpur. It doesn't matter if you know how to get to Bhagalpur. It doesn't matter if you have the strength to get to Bhagalpur. You are not going to get to Bhagalpur because you can't cycle.Craft is the first step. Art is the rest of the journey. So when someone says that you need to know the craft to create your art, they're not wrong. You do need to know how to ride a bicycle in order to get to Bhagalpur. But getting to Bhagalpur is going to require much more than simply cycling because everyone can get to Bhagalpur.There are other people who will walk to Bhagalpur, there are people who will take the bus—and by bus, I mean AI writing, that infernal thing that is going around right now. And some people are naturally, you know, they live in Bhagalpur. They don't have to cycle to Bhagalpur. So when someone says that the craft of writing is important, what they're really telling you is that the ability to frame your art using the traditions of writing is important, and they're not wrong.But when they say that the only way to write is by being a good craftsman, then they're probably not right because there have been many great writers who were not great craftsmen, and they have still left great works of art. They created their own craft. There have been writers who created their own ways of writing, who created their own genres. There are writers whose work cannot be classified into a genre. There have been writers who have deliberately broken the rules of craft. There have been writers who have invented new ways of exercising the craft. That’s all possible.But for the most part, if you're a professional writer and you want to send your manuscript to a publisher, one of the first things the publisher will look at is if you know the craft. When your manuscript gets to a publisher, the editor picks it up, reads the first page, and if they see you falling off the bicycle on the first page, they're going to put it away. They’re not going to look at it, even if you actually got to where you wanted to go.Secondly, I think that often a lot of conversation that surrounds craft makes it appear as if craft is the only thing that matters. And that is not true. You will find plenty of channels on YouTube where people are giving you advice about craft—this is the form your writing should take, this is where the climax should come, this is the rising tension, this is the descending tension, this is the ultimate ending.They give an inordinate amount of attention to craft, and they go into the nitty-gritty of it. You can actually drive yourself mad by focusing that much on craft. Get the basics of the craft right. Focus on your art. Leave the rest to an editor. You don't have to make the entire journey alone. Have people around you who can help you with your writing, who can give you feedback on your work, and people who can help you make your writing better.So my advice, generally speaking—craft is important. But people who say craft is the most important thing ever are often just telling you what works for them. And what works for them may not be what works for you. You are a different person. You are a different writer. You are a different kind of creator.Focus on the craft as much as is necessary, and not more than that. Because if you get trapped in craft, then craft is basically how to make a pot. If you learn how to make a pot, you'll make a pot. But every pot will look the same. And ideally, your work should be an expression of who you are and what you have to add to the world.So use craft to make art. But don't be limited to the craft. There are people who will obsess over craft, who will tell you, "These are the 10 rules of X, and you must follow them. Otherwise, you're not doing X." These people exist in every field. And that’s b******t.Writing is about expressing yourself artistically. Focus on a nice, balanced middle ground. If you want to learn craft, there are plenty of good people who are teaching it. There are plenty of good books about it. If you want to learn art, that is something that grows out of your ability to express yourself and the ideas that you want to share.If you're a young writer, don't worry about it. If your writing sounds like some other writer you read a lot, that's perfectly normal. You're supposed to grow by imitating. Eventually, the hope is that your own style will emerge, and you'll be able to express yourself in a way that is unique to you. This is a process. It doesn't happen on day one. It doesn't happen on day 1,000. It happens on day 50,000.The best way to learn writing is to incorporate craft into your art and then practice. The most important thing is not craft or art—it is consistency. Focus on working hard regularly so that your craft improves and you are better able to frame your art using the craft.I hope all of that made sense. And if it didn’t, I apologize—I’m only a writer. I will see you in the next video with another piece of writing advice. Would you like to see more writing-related videos? Let me know. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.fathomdaily.com

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the podcast.And today I want to talk about followers, especially I, as you may already have seen in the title to this episode, I want to talk about losing followers.And when I say how to lose followers, it might seem like I'm trying to warn you about what not to do. Like I'm being ironical somehow. I'm being sarcastic. I'm telling you by saying how to lose followers. What I want you to think is that you shouldn't lose followers. But I'm actually being serious and sincere. I really am going to tell you how to lose followers.Because believe it or not, sometimes... that is a good thing. We all create in social media and we are given to understand that having a lot of followers or having a huge platform is a good thing. And that's not entirely incorrect. But while a lot of us create content and talk and write, etc. online, thinking that we are giving people something, that we are bringing change in people's lives, what we remain unaware of is the fact that our followers also change us. And this happens more and more as time passes.So let me explain to you what I mean by that first. What I mean is that your name is Raju and you start a YouTube channel. You start putting out videos about what you think is good with the world, what you believe in, what you enjoy, et cetera. You talk about your passions and your interests. And you convey information and ideas about the things that you think are important.And then time passes and you begin to get an audience which is interested in the kind of thing that you're talking about. Some more time passes and you reach a wall. You hit a wall where the number of people who are likely to be interested in the kind of thing that you're talking about is limited. And therefore, you kind of got into where you can be. If you're talking about your interests and not some generic topic that is trending, then you will eventually hit a wall of some sort unless you diversify.So in order to change things, in order to make sure that your audience, your rate of growth does not plateau, you diversify. You start talking about other things. You start talking about a thing that happened once and got you a lot of views. So you come to the conclusion that if I talk about this more... then more people will come and watch and it works. So you keep doing that. You keep diversifying, you keep changing, you keep making new things, you keep getting more followers.With time, you eventually get to a point where you are no longer talking about the thing that you wanted to talk about when you started your channel. You're no longer talking about the thing that you are passionate about, and you're now talking about things that people want to hear from you. You got followers because that is what you aimed for. You got more followers than you needed. And that is why you can no longer break free from the cycle that requires you to continuously feed that follower machine.Not all your followers are the same follower. They're not all good for you. Some of your followers are actually good for you. They want to follow you for the reasons that you want to be followed. But some others will follow you because they want you to do what they want. And that's not necessarily something hard to understand. That is how the online ecosystem works. That is how the algorithm works.I recently wrote an essay in which I gave the rather insensitive example of someone's family member dying. Suppose your name is Kaju and a family member dies and you make a video about it and that video gets a lot of traffic. Now, conventional wisdom will have you thinking, hmm, this is what people like. Maybe I should do more of it. How will you do more of it? How will you make more videos about the death of your family member without looking cheap, without looking like a sellout, without looking like someone who's fleecing the algorithm for all it's worth by making money using a personal tragedy? You can't. Unless you're shameless. In which case, congratulations!And the weirdest thing about all this is that these days followers don't even matter that much. Followers, subscribers, whatever you want to call them on social media, they don't really matter much. There are channels with millions of subscribers who get 10 people watching when they live stream. There are channels with small subscriber bases, which are much more loyal and much more regularly viewing their content. There are Instagram accounts with millions of followers. And you'll find that the only people who comment on their posts are those 10 people who followed them since the beginning or worse bots.These days when you log on to your social media feed, the thing that you see is what the algorithm has decided you should see. It is not based on who you follow, who you subscribe to, etc. The algorithm is now feeding you what it thinks you will watch. And it is right in many cases. You do end up enjoying the things that your algorithm suggests to you. But whatever happened to the follow button?We have already talked about how the death of the follower is something that is being increasingly talked about, but we don't often talk about why it might be a good idea to lose the followers that are not useful. You do need to lose some of your followers.For example, look at the email marketing industry. The email marketing industry works this way. You have an email newsletter, people subscribe to it, and then you have an open rate, which means that of all the people who receive the email that you send, how many people actually clicked on the email and opened it? And then there is a click through rate, which means that if there is a link in that email, how many people actually clicked on it?When an email newsletter owner wants to make money, he or she goes to an advertiser and says, I have an email newsletter. It has this much open rate and this much click through rate. If you put your ad in my emails, a lot of people are likely to click it and buy the thing.Now, if an email newsletter has 1000 subscribers, but only 10 people open the email and one person clicks it, it's a very bad rate, right? But if an email newsletter has 100 subscribers and 50 of them open the email and 20 of them click the link, then that's a good rate. It's percentage-wise, a better rate that you can put in front of the advertiser who will then say, okay, it's a smaller audience, but at least it's a much more active audience. It's a much more proactive audience that is likely to take action on the ad that is put in front of them.So from the perspective of the person who owns the email newsletter, it is healthier to lose followers. In fact, many people actually do this. There are several huge email newsletters who send out an email once a year telling people that unless you open this email and click on this link, we are going to remove you from our list because even though you are subscribed, the only thing you're doing is reducing our open rate percentage. So they knowingly, willingly remove people from their subscriber base.This is unheard of in social media. People don't do this on social media. You will never hear about people deliberately preventing people from subscribing or preventing people from following or removing followers or subscribers because. It's a vanity metric. The only purpose it serves is that someone will come to your profile. They will look at your profile. They'll see how many people follow you. And they'll be like, so many people follow them. They must be doing something good. I should also follow them. And this logic is only, it's a very cosmetic thing. It works on the surface level. It does not really have much utility beyond that.Because the days of a million people follow you. So a million people will see what you're posting. Those days are gone. The algorithm does not work like that anymore. So what you're faced with is the sad reality that not all your followers are useful or good for you. Having a huge follower base is pretty much meaningless. It has one meaning, which is that it serves as social proof of the fact that you have power and influence. But beyond that, if your goal as a creator is to build a community of people who actually listen to what you have to say, it's kind of counterproductive now.So how do you go about losing followers? You return to your roots. You remind yourself why you started your channel or your profile and you start focusing on that. You do not pay attention to the people who say, I followed you for XYZ if that XYZ is no longer in keeping with your vision for your channel or your profile. You will lose followers, not by manually removing them or by asking them, but by focusing on the things that you genuinely want to do and things that you started off with the intention of doing things that you want to build a community around. Focus on that, double down on it, triple down on it and lose the people who are not following you for those reasons.I often get emails from young people who are video editors who have the best of intentions. I'm not complaining against anyone. But they tell me that my videos will perform better if they had more editing, as in if they had more graphics and sound effects and flying text and all that. And I don't often reply to these emails because I want to be kind. But there is a reason I keep my videos plain and simple. There's a reason my videos are just me talking to the camera like this.Because I do not want an audience who's only watching my videos because... There are flying graphics in them. I want an audience which is okay with watching me just talk. In fact, in case you haven't noticed, this is a podcast. This is a podcast. I end my episodes not by saying thank you for watching, but by saying thank you for listening. Watching is a very passive activity. Listening has multiple meanings. It means more than just hearing what is being said. It means listening. Listening. Paying attention and remembering what has been said.This is why parents tell children to listen to them, not to watch them, which is not to say that editing is a bad thing, more power to people who edit their videos. But then again, it has to do with the kind of audience they want to build. If they want to build an audience that watches their videos because their videos have been beautifully edited, more power to them. But that is not what I am here for. I am a writer. I want people to watch me because they enjoy my words.So stay true to why you do what you do. And when you find that a lot of people who are following you are following you for reasons other than that, maybe there is some value in diversifying if all you are interested in is a vanity metric, which you can show to advertisers to get ads on your social media profile. But if your goal is not that, if your long-term plan is not aligned with simply serving ads on your profile and making money that way, then maybe don't go down that road.Thank you for listening. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.fathomdaily.com

Disclaimer: The following is a transcript of this video episode. It has been edited for grammar and clarity using an AI tool.In India, we have this term called Godi Media, where a mainstream media outlet or a television channel or a newspaper, usually a Hindi newspaper (but English newspapers have also started doing this), has bent over backward to accommodate the needs of whoever is in power. This means that a politician, a minister, or a political party with a certain agenda asks them to treat certain topics as things that should not be spread, and certain topics as things that should be spread. They bend over backward to accommodate this. They do anything they can to make the minister, the political party, or anyone who follows that political ideology happy. They don’t care about anything other than the fact that their profit margins might be affected by those in power being unfriendly towards them, leading to the potential loss of government ads or some such issues.Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who’s at the helm of Meta Platforms (the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and whatnot), has decided to go full-on Godi Media. In anticipation of Donald Trump’s return to power, he is making some bizarre changes to the social media platforms he owns and controls. I am not complaining that Facebook is going to end. I’m a huge fan of the current social networks ending and being replaced by something more valuable—something that is genuinely a social network. But even I did not anticipate that this manner of suicide would be committed by someone like Mark Zuckerberg.Let me tell you what all he’s doing to Meta, and then you can tell me if you think this is better for the company or for social media. The first move is this: Meta now allows people to call LGBTQ+ people mentally ill. I don’t even know where to begin with this. You have a social network, and a huge number of people who use the social network are non-binary, non-heterosexual, or non-gender normative. They rely on social media as a place to express themselves because their family, friends, and the places where they live are not friendly toward their existence. They have managed to build communities online by making use of the social network. But now, the social network is saying, “We are going to subject them to the same kind of bullying that they experience in the real world.” Meta is not going to protect them.There was even a news item about certain themes in chat that allowed people to express their LGBTQ+ identities, and now those themes are being removed because Mark Zuckerberg is afraid that homophobes, transphobes, and others will get offended by Meta allowing people to express their gender identity. Even people within Meta are unhappy about this because they fear that this is not only a terrible thing to do but might also backlash and harm the company. This is understandable. But Facebook has never stood on its own two feet when it comes to relationships with those in power. If Mark Zuckerberg can bend over backward to accommodate the Hindutva crowd in India, it’s not surprising that his subservience to those in power would eventually affect his business decisions in the U.S.Another recent news item discusses how Meta is now encouraging the creation of AI bots on its platforms. Soon, users will interact with AI bots online the same way they interact with real humans. This raises a fundamental question: What does “social” mean in social media? Is it interactions between humans and machines, machines and humans, or humans and humans enabled by machines? I may be old-fashioned, but I come from an era where “social” meant people talking to each other. I also recall TikTok’s assertion that Facebook would never compete with them because Facebook’s model is the social graph while TikTok’s model is entertainment. Meta seems to be veering toward TikTok’s direction—becoming an entertainment platform rather than a social network.We are already talking about the death of the follower. If you’re unfamiliar, look up a talk by Patreon CEO Jack Conte called “The Death of the Follower”. He explains how, in the early 2010s, the “follow” became a fundamental internet architecture, allowing users to follow creators they liked. But now, if you log onto the homepage of any platform, the recommended content is not what you subscribed to but what the algorithm thinks you’d like. This is akin to TV, where you had no choice but to watch whatever was on. The internet was supposed to be revolutionary because it let you decide what you watched and engaged with. Meta’s current trajectory is reversing that trend.Another troubling development is Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to relax hate speech restrictions on Meta’s platforms. Previously, there was at least the possibility of action against hate speech, but now such speech will be permitted more freely. As someone from India, I can attest to Facebook and Instagram’s poor track record in addressing hate speech. Practically every time hate speech is reported, it is deemed non-violative of their community guidelines. Furthermore, there have been reports of individuals sympathetic to certain political parties infiltrating Facebook to reduce the reach of pages critical of the government while ignoring hateful conduct by those favorable to the ruling party.These changes do not appear to be mere policy decisions; they are political decisions by a CEO attempting to keep his company afloat under a politically unpredictable American president. Mark Zuckerberg must surely understand that these decisions are not the way for Meta to survive. Either he has given up on Facebook and Instagram remaining what they are, or he is accelerating the death of social media—a prospect I am not entirely against. Social media, as it exists today, is neither healthy individually nor socially. If Mark Zuckerberg’s decisions lead to the demise of platforms like Facebook, then perhaps it’s for the best.Thank you for listening. I’ll see you in the next one. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.fathomdaily.com