How much longer are we going to allow its platform to foment hatred and undermine democracy?

Sydney Pugh, a lifestyle influencer in Los Angeles, recently staged a fake ad for a local cafe, purchasing her own mug of coffee, photographing it, and adding a promotional caption carefully written in that particular style of ad speak anyone who spends a lot of time on Instagram will recognize. “Instead of [captioning] ‘I need coffee to get through the day,’ mine will say ‘I love Alfred’s coffee because of A, B, C,’” Pugh told me. “You see the same things over and over on actual sponsored posts, so it becomes really easy to emulate, even if you’re not getting paid.”

Cal Newport on the IndieWeb’s answer to social-media giants like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: decentralized platforms, including Mastodon and Micro.blog.