The censorship and state control of media the West once alarmingly criticized China and other countries for, is now strikingly similar to their own strategy but with different values - China’s internet being more Orwellian and the West’s being more Huxleyian.

This is as much a problem of platform logic as it is of political economy: Reactionary outrage begets clickrates, which begets attention and reach especially when the people running these media platforms are themselves largely sympathetic to reactionary beliefs.

Social media incentivized more extreme views at the same time that China began to develop an entirely different internet that, unlike the Western internet, was built on the values expressed by the state.

The only way to be good today is to operate under the surface of the current media, on your own infrastructure, articulating what “good” is for your community. The doom of pervasive evil is not outdone by hope, but by the curiosity and boldness to do something on your own terms.

Going dark is one strategy of the savvy and privileged.

the mainnet turns into a slop of “for anyone” consumer trends and long Twitter battles with bots, but the place where culture actually happens is hidden and so fragmented that it can’t help but create strong divergences between people.

But as the dream of inevitable progress by doing good failed to materialize in most of the world, the political tenor has decidedly shifted away from the 20th century heydays of liberalism, inclusive globalism, and cosmopolitan network culture toward a balkanization of the political and cultural map.

Masks are off in 2025. After years of virtue signalling, hopes for progressive politics, waves of inclusivity programs, and community-oriented messaging, the do-good era of being online is now over.

X has turned into a bullhorn for “anti-woke” sentiments used to boost Musk’s political messaging, Meta has abandoned its fact checking in deference to possible Trump retribution against the Zuckerberg empire; Starlink, TikTok, and Nvidia/TSCM are becoming geopolitical bargaining chips in nativist industrial trade wars; Network States are gaining