Get your smart on.
Yesterday I got the little pop-up notice to agree to new terms of service and promptly deleted the TikTok app. Unlike that other time that I also thought TikTok was dead and deleted the app (I wrote about it in “你好 (Ni Hao)! America’s Little Red Book Affair”), we are in a whole new world. People have gotten smart to the enshitification game, worked to diversify their digital lives across multiple platforms.
It used to be that I could only find most people on one or two apps. Personally, none of my accounts were the same across social media. Now, I can find and have followed people off of TikTok and onto Substack, Youtube, Bluesky, Skylight, etc. I can now find them on the platforms where I prefer to spend my time.
Some of us, really feeling the pinch of not owning our data and identities on these platforms, have realized the importance of having our own websites, digital spaces that we control a lot more. Not totally, but a lot more.
I am taking this opportunity to show you to my new home online: philosophypublics. com. It is a low distraction environment. I purposefully built it to be very sparse — there are not even any images over there at the moment. It’s all just me and my thoughts, and you should you chose to visit. It may seem very very boring at first, but maybe we’ll all grow to like these kinds of paired-down digital spaces.
I’ll still be on Substack (as long as they behave), Medium, Bluesky, and am experimenting on Tumblr, but I will be syndicating my content from my home to these other distribution channels. (If you want to sent up something like this, build a website from scratch or on a CMS like Wordpress, I can help you do that for a reasonable rate, hit me up.)
The first time TikTok was turned off, it took many of us a little by surprise — we knew it was coming, but not how or what form the lights-out would take. It was shocking, never having had an app banned and taken from United States users (unless you are a poker player and lived through that Black Friday, April 15th 2011, when poker sites like PokerStars where shut down by the US Department of Justice). But now, now we’ve had time to prepare, and it’s not such a shock. We are all on multiple platforms and follow each other in multiple places.
If they want to control public discourse, they are going to have to control the internet. And they can’t just shut it down (the favored tactic of despots) because that is also how they can keep their eye on us, and the entire U.S. economy is tied to the data the internet is producing. Predictably, the next step is to try to gate the internet (in the name of protecting children, already underway), with access being a matter of survival. That is where the fight will move to next. Stay safe out there frens, and start learning about measures to protect your privacy, if you are not already doing this. 🔌
I have indulged my TikTok addiction in these past few weeks, knowing it would be time to delete the app very soon. This week I will enjoy a moment of disconnection before plugging back in.