In March 2025 an alleged debate between Elon Musk and Keanu Reeves went viral on Substack. The post amassed 25,000 likes and nearly 5,000 reposts. Even today, it continues to spread. But the debate between Musk and Reeves never happened. The Substack post was entirely generated by AI.

Lately it feels like I’m encountering more and more AI-generated content on Substack. This mirrors patterns across the broader web. Last fall, media outlets declared that over 50% of all articles online were AI generated. According to some pundits, that number could rise to 90% by the end of this year. As a human writer, I think a lot about the prospect of being drowned out by a deluge of AI generated slop, and I began to wonder how much top content on Substack is really just AI.

Pangram is a tool that can detect AI generated text, even if it’s been “humanized“ or put through tools to evade AI detection. (They have a fantastic Chrome extension that allows anyone to check if the content they’re reading is AI.) I leveraged Pangram’s API to build a program that would analyze the 10 most recent posts from the top 25 Substack Bestsellers in every category, and reveal how much top content on Substack is AI generated.

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The first thing I found is that the majority of Bestseller content on Substack is not AI. Two-thirds of top publications, 384 out of 575 newsletters, did not have a single trace of AI generated content in their recent archive, according to Pangram.

Certain Bestseller categories are much more likely to contain AI-generated content. Bestseller content in Technology had the most AI-generated writing. 28% of writing in top newsletters in Technology is fully or partially AI generated. That means that more than 1 in 4 posts in Technology have a substantial level of AI content. This is somewhat expected – people writing about technology usually love to leverage new technology, and some well-known tech writers on Substack have been open about using AI to draft their stories.

Other categories that contained high levels of AI writing were more concerning. 23% of top content in the Philosophy category and 22% of top content in the Health category is partially or fully AI generated. After that, the percentages drop precipitously. 13% of writing in Culture has been shaped by AI, and only 5% in sports, 3% in food and drink, and 1% in music, according to Pangram.

It seems like the more analytical the content is, the more it’s likely to be generated by AI. People don’t appear to want to get their cultural commentary, musings about restaurants or travel, or music reviews from AI, and these categories are heavily built around personal, human voices.

When it comes to technology, business, health, or philosophy, though, Substack readers do seem comfortable getting information from AI, or at least allowing AI to shape the information they’re consuming, whether consciously or not.

Another trend I discovered is that publications that are using AI use it on almost every post. There are some newsletters that are publishing 100% AI generated content, according to Pangram, seemingly with no human editing whatsoever. These newsletters are warping the broader category trends.

This is especially true in News, where one AI-generated newsletter makes up 35% of all majority-AI posts in the category. Culture and World Politics also had outliers. Just two large Culture publications account for roughly three-quarters of AI content in that category. Same for World Politics, where, if two major AI-generated newsletters were removed, the category mean would drop from 8.4% to just 2% AI content.

The success of these large AI-driven newsletters reveals that a handful of people appear to be profiting significantly from running high-volume AI-operated newsletters in otherwise very human-dominated categories. Just 29 Substack publications produced half of all majority-AI posts.

Overall, the top-ranked publications in each Bestseller categories use slightly less AI, but in Business, Art & Illustration, Parenting, and Sports, the top 10 publications are actually more likely to use AI than the rest of the leaderboard. In Business, the top 10 publishers average 14.4% AI, whereas publishers ranked 15 and below average 0.8% AI.

As I scrolled through the data, I was surprised that some categories contained either low or high amounts of AI-generated content. I used Pangram’s Chrome extension to easily spot-check posts from publications across categories. While some posts were clearly 100% AI generated and some were fully human, Pangram also identifies a mix of human and AI-authored content within a single post. Pangram lets you scroll through a post as it highlights what text is likely AI-generated or contains signatures of AI-generated writing. The tool also provides a graph of AI usage across the document.

There are some limitations to this analysis. Some top newsletters paywall a portion of their posts, so Pangram only processed the free preview text available. Pangram’s model requires 50+ words to determine outcome, and the model leans towards a “Human” outcome when it is unsure to preserve the writer in question. Substack’s full Bestseller lists contain 100 publications each, however, for the purpose of this research, my program only analyzed the top 25 publications in each category.

My feelings about what I discovered are mixed. Competing on Substack is hard. Out of the top 20 Substack Bestsellers in Technology there is only one woman: me. I spend hours on my newsletter every week. And so learning that a significant portion of my competition in Technology is leveraging LLMs has made me wonder if I should experiment more with automation. For example, using AI to auto-generate my link round ups at the end of my newsletter. (If I do this, I will disclose my AI use).

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At the same time, the results were also validating. Clearly, there is still a strong desire for human-written content and analysis. The fact that two-thirds of Substack Bestsellers don’t appear to use AI at all, proves that there’s still value in producing human-written content and that human-written content can result in financial success. Substack seems to be staving off the broader slopification of the internet for the time being.

But, I am concerned about the group of high-volume, fully-AI publishers that are pulling entire categories in a direction that readers probably haven’t consciously chosen. These people seem to be using AI to fully automate newsletter production on a massive scale. And, based on the available paid subscription data, appear to be making a lot of money doing it.

The best advice I have for readers is to pay close attention to what you’re reading on Substack, especially if you’re consuming content about Technology, Philosophy, Health, or Business, where AI writing is most prevalent. Pangram can also help. Download their Chrome extension to easily check for AI-generated text as you scroll the web. It can show how much AI content is in your feed on LinkedIn, X, Reddit, or Substack. Using Pangram’s Chrome extension regularly has helped refine my own natural ability to identify AI generated text.

User Mag readers can get a free month of Pangram using the code: USERMAGPANGRAM

👉 The most effective way to fight back against AI slop is to support real, human creators! You can buy a paid subscription to my newsletter here. 👈

Thank you to Pangram for sponsoring this post.

What I’m reading

Dwarkesh Patel’s Podcast Lets You Eavesdrop on the A.I. Elite

Dwarkesh Patel was a bored college sophomore looking for intellectual stimulation. Now he commands interviews with Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg and holds his own with deeply nerdy A.I. researchers. - NY Times

With A.I., Anyone Can Be an Influencer

TikTok and Instagram made it easy to monetize the physical self. Now the social-media-savvy can use A.I. to play with their identity, or overhaul it entirely. - New Yorker

Are on-screen relationships normalizing settling?

From Beef, to Materialists, to The Drama, a new wave of on-screen drama questions whether motivations for marriage can ever be wholly ‘pure’. - DAZED

Sergey Brin, his "MAGA Girlfriend" and a $57 million bid to kill the California billionaires tax.

The inside story of how a Google cofounder and a gut-health influencer ghosted Matt Mahan and confronted Gavin Newsom — even if Newsom is "handsome." - NY Times

What Happens If Trump Seizes AI Companies

The administration could exert much greater control over the industry—but just how far would it go? - The Atlantic

Democratic Governance of AI Is the Real Solution

The potential for catastrophic effects from the AI boom demands robust deliberation and real democratic governance. Localized initiatives like data center moratoria won’t get us there. - Jacobin

Techno-fascist fashion: Why Silicon Valley is moving into menswear

Palantir’s new ‘chore coat’ merch is just another way for the spy tech firm to worm its way inside our brains – but why is the tech industry now so obsessed with ‘taste’? - DAZED

The Men Who Want Their Foreskins Back

Some try to manually stretch their skin into place. Others are turning to experimental surgery. - The Cut

User Mag news rundown

Technology

• 560+ Google employees signed a letter urging CEO Pichai to reject military use of Google AI, warning it could enable mass surveillance.

• Brands are releasing behind the scenes videos of their ads to prove they don’t use AI.

• Tinder is making users scan their eyeballs for “proof of humanity.”

• A cafe in Sweden went viral after claims that it is run entirely by Gemini AI, but it turns out it actually still needs humans.

• A YouTuber built an anti-surveillance backpack to dodge America’s 82 million surveillance cameras.

• Every new car in the U.S. will be required by law to have tech that puts constant surveillance on the driver by 2027.

• Samsung’s first smart glasses, which are launching later this year, have leaked

• A ‘hyperscale’ data center project in Utah is expected to generate and consume more power than the entire state.

• Tech entrepreneur Ben Pasternak has been charged with felony strangulation of his girlfriend.

• China says it will reverse a major AI acquisition by Meta.

• A town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it’s like adding 51 Walmarts.

• Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman head to court in a high-stakes showdown over AI

• Technologist Riley Walz made a time machine for Wikipedia

• Canva apologized after its AI tool replaced the word ‘Palestine’ with ‘Ukraine’ in designs.

• There’s a wall of shame for vibe coded apps, ranking the worst ones in terms of security practices.

• Two college kids raise a $5.1 million to build an AI social network in iMessage.

• Anthropic is paying up to $400,000 a year for an events role. They’re looking for someone to own the execution of brand experiences that translate Anthropic’s values into physical moments.

• Silicon Valley execs are embracing a new breed of bodyguards after the Altman attack

Internet Culture

• Gen Alpha boys prefer “AI girlfriends” over real ones.

• Police are detaining Scientology speed runners as the viral trend ramps up.

• Silicon Valley OnlyFans creator Aella, who organized the pro-Billionaire march in SF, has launched an AI doomer creator residency with Grimes as a mentor. They will pay influencers thousands of dollars to post content about how AI could destroy the world.

• Hasan Piker is now the 3rd most-watched Twitch streamer in the world.

• The Casino charity Duel paid $500k to have Andrew Tate stream blackjack, but the agency sent Bottom G, an Andrew Tate impersonator. They only realized when “Tate” started slut dancing and doing the splits on the table.

• Matcha nails are the latest Gen Z beauty trend.

• Footwear is getting more eccentric in what fashion insiders have dubbed “freaky sandal summer.”

• A Polish influencer broke the world record for charity fundraising during a livestream, raising ~$69M for children’s cancer treatment over a nine-day stream.

• Two Florida teens were arrested for driving lawnmower into Target & using leafblower in Culver’s to go viral

• A man won $500k after TikTok inspired him to play the lottery.

Pop Culture

• The $50 movie ticket has arrived.

• There is a Rotten Tomatoes war happening right now over the Michael Jackson movie.

• Madonna is using Grindr to promote her new album.

• Cynthia Erivo completed the London Marathon as her iconic Wicked song played at the finish line.

• Taylor Swift has filed a trademark on her voice and likeness to protect against AI.

• The owner of Letterboxed is exploring a sale.

Politics

• Everyone online seems to think the White House Correspondent’s Dinner shooting was staged

• Democratic super PAC Priorities USA is launching an effort to make inroads with voters in “conservative-adjacent YouTube niches,” spending six figures to target voters watching sports, comedy podcasts, MAHA health/fitness content and more.

• In leaked audio recordings, Peter Thiel suggested that the pope was a tool of the Antichrist.

• Israel has hired a Trump surrogate to lead an AI influence campaign, getting pro-Israel messaging into AI products like ChatGPT

• The USDA just signed a $300M deal with Palantir to consolidate the data of every farmer

• FOIA documents show Palantir is helping the IRS target criminal investigations using “massive-scale” data mining across federal databases. This comes as the agency has reportedly pivoted toward targeting left-leaning political organizations

• Gov. Janet Mills of Maine vetoed legislation that would have blocked new data centers in Maine until November 2027

Media

• Ronan Farrow is on Substack now.

• Poog, a podcast hosted by Jacqueline Novak and Kate Berlant, briefly had to rebrand after a dispute with their parent company, but now they’re back to the name Poog.

• 49% of adults say they mostly get news because they happen to come across it, not by actively seeking it out, an increase from 39% in 2019.

• In the 1950s, the Iowa Writers Workshop received funding from the CIA to push a writing style that centered the emotional life of the individual while decentering the social and political forces that shape human behavior

Lifestyle & Health.

• Pope Leo is trying to get the Catholic Church to focus less on sex.

• Academics are studying what generates “food noise” aka relentless thoughts of food.

• A third of Gen Z believe they’re psychic.

• 100 Italian chefs broke a world record with a 1,445-foot tiramisu

• The weed killer Roundup, which has been linked to a host of horrific health issues, is being sprayed across every U.S. forest at record rates.

• A man has been jailed after climbing the Las Vegas Sphere and telling police he’d get away with it.

For more great content follow my meme page, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and join my Instagram broadcast channel where I share links all week long.

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Kat Tenbarge of Spitfire News joins me on this week’s Power User episode to discuss the AI “Hot Girl Economy” and how tech giants are using aesthetic trends to Trojan-horse AI into our daily lives. We cover everything from viral Studio Ghibli filters and the AI puppy photo craze, to how startups like Higgsfield are targeting fashion influencers.

We also discuss what this “AI girly pop era” is designed to distract you from: extreme labor displacement, massive energy consumption, and the tech industry becoming increasingly intertwined with the US War Machine. [WATCH]

What I’m reading

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I investigated this question for a story in Vanity Fair. I dug into the rise of AI digital clones and how more influencers and celebrities are seeking to scale their digital likenesses. You can read the full story here! One quote that really stuck with me:

Robert Freund, an attorney in California who works with content creators and talent agencies, said that influencers may be a canary in the coal mine for problems that all of us might soon face with the rise of this tech.

“The typical person does not want to see their face on billboards without their consent,” he said, “and that’s effectively what can happen if you sign up for one of these AI platforms without understanding what you’re doing.”

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Inside Iran’s Gen Z Meme Army

We are living in an era where global internet culture and meme warfare are even more influential than the mainstream media, and LEGOs are being used to create the most effective messaging around the US-Iran war.

I sat down with Areeba Fatima, a journalist for Dropsite News, who’s been reporting on the team behind “Explosive Media,” the group of seemingly Gen Z Iranians producing this viral content. Areeba got inside access to the Explosive Media Telegram channel, and was able to reveal clues about the identities of the young content creators producing these videos.

We dive deep into how these LEGO videos are actively reshaping Americans’ perceptions of modern warfare, and why this content is uniquely bridging the gap across the American political spectrum. [WATCH]

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I’ll be writing about some of what I see/learn at this conference later this week or next depending on how hectic things get. In the meantime, here’s this week’s newsletter…

After his Wichita school district began installing AI cameras in school busses, local bus driver Kent Myrtle began been fighting back. He got himself thrown out of a safety hearing and has been trying to sound the alarm to local press about potential privacy concerns with the new AI surveillance tech.

From Wichita to Massachusetts, school districts are partnering with AI companies to implement "real-time monitoring" and "hazard detection” AI cameras.

I had Myrtle on to discuss what’s happening in his district, the "safety" claims around AI threat detection, AI systems mistaking bags of chips for weapons, how school buses are being turned into roving surveillance machines for law enforcement, and more. [WATCH]

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As every top free speech lawyer in the country and the writer Peter Suderman has noted, “tobacco is a chemical that is ingested into the body with specific, measurable, physical effects. Social media is a delivery system for speech—speech that will be different for every user, and speech that is protected by the First Amendment because, well, it’s speech.”

My former Atlantic colleague Derek Thompson wrote similarly last week explaining that, social media “isn’t a toxin that we can isolate and test and ban. It is an information-delivery system — a relentless, inescapable IV drip of news, connection, outrage, friendship, conspiracy, solidarity, and garbage — whose effect on any individual depends entirely on what’s in the drip.”

The New York Times Opinion section also ran a piece attempting to make this distinction. Titled, Don’t Cheer Too Hard for the Facebook Verdicts, they write, “a social media site isn’t a bottle of alcohol or a cigarette. It’s not delivering a drug. It’s delivering speech. Sometimes that speech is silly and harmless. Sometimes it is toxic and harmful. Sometimes it’s educational or inspiring. But it’s all speech, and in America speech traditionally can only be blocked, censored or regulated in the narrowest of circumstances.”

Still, proponents of censorship and mass surveillance laws claim that there’s some magical way social media is providing “dopamine” that makes the content uniquely “addictive” and worthy of mass government censorship.

Christopher J. Ferguson, a psychologist and researcher who studies this topic, wrote about how delusional these claims about dopamine are in a fantastic piece for RealClearInvestigations:

There’s a problem with this scientific-sounding explanation for an alleged explosion in addictive behaviors: It is not supported by science.

Solid research connecting dopamine spikes to drugs and alcohol – that is, the capacity of one chemical to ignite another – has not been shown to occur in similar ways with other behaviors. Drug use is fundamentally and physiologically different from behaviors that do not rely on pharmaceutical effects. This has been confirmed in humans: Technology, such as video games or social media, simply doesn’t influence dopamine receptors the way illicit substances do.

Experts say what we are seeing instead is pseudoscience that appears to legitimize a moral panic about behaviors that trouble certain segments of society. By falling for this pseudoscience, parents and others are at risk of missing more fundamental mental health issues that could be at the root of the obsessive behavior, potentially harming the very children they seek to help.

“Addiction is an important clinical term with a troubled and weighty history,” said Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist and coauthor of a brief explainer of what dopamine does and doesn’t do. “People enduring genuine addiction struggle to be taken seriously or viewed sympathetically at the best of times, so to apply their very serious condition to much more benign actions like scrolling TikTok makes this worse.”

Burnett likens current narratives about dopamine and technology to “science garnish,” effectively adding a dash of scientific language to nonsense beliefs. “It’s the informational equivalent of sprinkling parsley on a lasagna that’s 90 percent horse offal,” he said. “It may look nicer, but it isn’t.”

The pseudoscience, however, does play a useful role for parents and others who seek to restrict the behaviors they find disturbing. After all, “Don’t do X because it will dangerously rewire the reward circuits of your brain and cause addiction” is more compelling than “Don’t do X because I don’t like it and think you are wasting your time.”

Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology at Bath Spa University in England and author of “Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time,” says research doesn’t support the claim that dopamine drives addiction in other pleasurable behaviors that don’t rely on pharmaceutical effects.

“The role that it plays is really complex, to the point that neuroscientists no longer really consider it the sole or universal factor to consider,” he said. “So, when we try to say dopamine ‘surge’ = pleasure surge = addiction, that doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny.”

You can read the full piece here. I think of a conversation I had with a safety researcher a couple weeks ago, who said that she thinks the entire framing of “dopamine” is deeply misleading. Using social media is nothing like listening to a pleasurable song or playing with a puppy, she said. Instead, it often causes us stress.

She said that, from what she’s seen, social media causes frequent cortisol spikes (sorry Clavicular!) which keep people engaged. This isn’t because of some harmful “design feature,” it’s because much of the information users confront online is stressful, and so they have a stress response. This is very different than the “dopamine” narrative that many grifters are pushing. I’d love to speak to anyone else doing work in this area.

Ari Cohn and Tyler Tone, also highlighted a really good thread over on Bluesky, where a user named lizardky.bsky.social basically asked the question, (as Ari and Tyler summarized): Wouldn’t a platform like Bluesky, where there is no content-recommendation algorithm and users can tailor their feeds to contain precisely the people and types of posts they want to see, even more addictive?

As Cohn and Tone write, “it seems clear that the actual complaint is: the specific content being delivered by the content-recommendation algorithms is the source of the harm.”

Of course, that’s the entire goal of these “social media addiction” lawsuits. We know that those pursuing them aren’t actually interested in changing the design of social media, their goal is to censor “harmful content.”

We know this in part because minutes after the verdict was announced in L.A., the parents of “social media victims” held a press conference. At that press conference, they didn’t mention a single thing about laws that would alter “design features.” Instead, they immediately began advocating for mass online ID verification, repealing Section 230, and passing the Kids Online Safety Act with a strong “duty of care.” All three of these policy proposals would lead to mass censorship and surveillance, and none of them would do anything to change the alleged “addictive design” of the platforms.

Cindy Cohn, former director of the EFF for 30 years, who has a great new book out called Privacy’s Defender, went on The Daily Show last night and attempted to explain these issues to Jon Stewart. He didn’t seem to really get it, and the audience clapped and cheered when the “social media addiction” verdict was mentioned, but she did her best and it’s worth a watch!

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We also discuss how the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the repeal of Section 230 will lead to mass surveillance and censorship, the disturbing testimony from the LA trial that the media completely ignored, and the link between these lawsuits and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. [WACTH]

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Protect your data with Proton

Big tech scans your emails, documents and photos, and uses that data to do things like train AI, profile you and sell your information to advertisers.

Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted email, which means your email content can’t be scanned. There’s no email trackers to tell senders and advertisers what you read and click on.

Proton Drive is the same principle applied to your files. You can securely store things like tax documents, family photos, sensitive files, because even the file metadata is encrypted.

Sometimes it feels like big tech is tracking us everywhere we go, but you don’t have to move to the woods and go off grid to escape.

Proton brings secure email and private cloud storage together in one simple subscription. Take control and protect your data!

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It’s Cheaper Than You Think to Bribe The Right Wing Media

It’s no secret that the right wing media ecosystem is flooded with writers, influencers, and media outlets that will happily accept bribes or dark money payments in exchange for positive coverage.

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As some readers of this newsletter know, I’m extremely immunocompromised, so, travel is difficult and takes a lot out of me. I usually need at least a day or two to recover, even after short trips. But, now here it is Wednesday and I have not sent the newsletter out in a week.

At SXSW this year a lot of people were asking me about how it feels to go independent. I tell them all the same thing: it sucks never being able to take a week off. It’s the biggest thing I miss about a full time job. Right now, I work 7 days a week, usually from the moment I wake up until well past midnight. Aside from a part time freelance podcast editor who helps with Power User, I do every single aspect of content production myself. It’s exhausting! 😵‍💫

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I’ve also noticed a phenomenon especially here on Substack, where, I think because people feel like they’re paying for a product (the newsletter) rather than to support my work as a whole, they unsubscribe or cancel their paid subscription if I don’t send the newsletter frequently enough. This is totally understandable! But, it also creates this system where the creator can never take a week off or work on larger projects without losing income.

This system is a huge bummer. I have a ton of investigative projects that I wish I could work on related to online freedom and mass surveillance, but there’s simply no funding structure for these bigger projects. So, I’m trapped on this newsletter hamster wheel.

A few months ago I launched this same newsletter on Patreon, and I have noticed that Patreon supporters, perhaps thanks to years of conditioning by YouTubers, are far more forgiving of breaks.

That’s great, because sending this newsletter is the only way I’ve been able to produce all of my videos covering censorship and surveillance laws online, as well as my weekly Free Speech Friday podcast and livestream, my internet culture coverage, my section 230 series and more. All of these things otherwise lose money, so this newsletter subsidizes them.

I’m going to keep publishing on both Patreon and Substack, but TLDR if you support any of my work or advocacy across the internet, please please buy a paid subscription to this newsletter or support my work on Patreon! I have:

• Zero long term brand partnerships.

• No outside funding.

• My work is 100% funded by people like you who want to see the coverage I do out in the world.

Thank you for supporting me!! <3

How Powerful People Became Obsessed w/ Section 230

Today, the Senate is set to hold a hearing on Section 230 that many lawmakers hope will result in repealing it. This would be awful, for all the reasons I have outlined previously. But how did this one little internet law become so controversial?

In the latest episode of my Section 230 mini-series I’m joined by Mike Masnick, founder of Techdirt. Mike and I break down how the whole drama surrounding Section 230 began and how this extremely important law became vilified by the mainstream media. (TLDR, it all started with a very bad and very misleading WIRED article a decade ago, a well-timed book!) We also debunk the biggest myths about Section 230, break down how the law actually works, and explain why removing it would make Big Tech even more powerful.

You’re going to be hearing a lot more about Section 230 in the coming year, and Mike did an amazing job myth-busting a lot of social media talking points!

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Most people don't even understand what an algorithm even is. Eric discusses how even the beloved "reverse chronological order" feed is an algorithm, and how it actually rewards spammers, trolls, and bad actors.

We dive deep into how politicians are using the techlash to amass more power, how censorship has become a bipartisan value, and how companies like Meta actually want Section 230 amended so they can wipe out their smaller competitors.

From the dangers of age verification laws to the truth about how algorithms protect us from a dystopian, miserable internet full of spam and scams, Eric and I discuss the real existential threats to the open web, and how arguments about "algorithms" miss the real powers at play. [WATCH]

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In the US, online age verification laws have passed or are being considered in more than half of the nation’s states. This week, a package of 19 “child safety” bills, several which require identity verification for social media, are set to move forward in the House of Representatives. Big tech platforms such as Meta, Google and Discord have begun pre-complying with these mass surveillance laws in order to get ahead of regulation.

While social media bans may seem like a smart idea to “protect children,” they are not only ineffective, they endanger both children and adults. There is zero evidence that social media is driving any type of widespread mental health crisis in children. Studies have repeatedly shown the opposite.

Removing anonymity from the web, which inevitably happens when tech companies are required to identify and ban children, allows for complete government tracking and censorship of journalists, activists, whistleblowers, and countless marginalized people and groups who rely on online anonymity.

Read the full piece here!! 👈👈👈👈👈👈👈👈👈👈

How Anti Abortion Groups Target the Internet

The fight against age verification and the efforts to dismantle Section 230 are deeply intertwined with the fight for reproductive rights. Today, I released the next installment of my Section 230 mini-series where I break down how anti abortion groups are targeting the internet itself.

From the 1873 Comstock Act to modern day efforts to repeal Section 230, there is a long history of using censorship laws to suppress reproductive health information. The fight for reproductive justice and bodily autonomy has always been deeply connected to free speech and open access to information online. And I sat down with Sarah Philips from Fight for the Future to uncover the real agenda behind the push to repeal Section 230.

While politicians, the media, and so many uninformed people on the left constantly frame weakening Section 230 as a way to "hold Big Tech accountable," these efforts actually undermine our right to access vital information related to reproductive justice and abortion online. Sarah and I dive deep into the history of speech law, and talk about where the fight stands today.

We discuss how early internet censorship efforts were disguised as protecting kids from indecent material, the devastating impact of SESTA/FOSTA and how it led to mass content takedowns of sex education and LGBTQ+ resources, and how the narrative of "tech addiction" is being weaponized to pass restrictive internet laws.

Speaking out against Big Tech and challenging institutional power is not lucrative, and these videos are entirely self-funded. If you value this content, please buy a paid subscription to this newsletter so that I can continue making this series!!! [WATCH HERE]

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‘Opensource Palantir’

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The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), is suing the government to fight back against these efforts. Today, Colin McDonnell, an attorney at FIRE joins me to break down FIRE’s lawsuit representing a Chicago-based Facebook group owner and an anti-ICE app founder against the government.

We discuss how DOJ and DHS officials, including Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, successfully pressured Apple and Facebook to remove an ICE-tracking app and a Chicago-based Facebook group with nearly 100,000 members. Colin breaks down why FIRE is suing the government , whether recording law enforcement in public is protected speech or dangerous "doxing,” the threats of a secret ICE protester database, and more!! WATCH NOW!

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What I’m reading

Salish Matter Got 87,000 Fans to Go to the Mall. Then Netflix Came Calling

The teen influencer Is a YouTube sensation, Sephora success story and coming soon to a streaming device near you.- WSJ

Online Accusations in Guthrie Abduction Leave One Family ‘Scared Numb’

A fifth-grade teacher and his principal wife hid in their bedroom as dozens of people who believed he might be a kidnapper appeared on their suburban street. - NY Times

AI Will Never Be Conscious

Michael Pollan argues that artificial intelligence can do many things, it just can’t be a person. - WIRED

Kids Show Us What They’re Into, From Pokémon to Pop Stars

We gave them disposable cameras to document their stuff, in all its glittery, sporty, nerdy glory. - Bloomberg

My Life as a Sex Worker at a Nevada Brothel

Men come to me for sex, yes. But in an age of profound loneliness and disconnection, they turn out to be looking for so much more. - Esquire

All the looksmaxxers are getting personality-mogged

The newly notorious streamer Clavicular has a sharp jawline but no charisma. As his movement goes mainstream, its lack of genuine sex appeal is getting increasingly obvious. - GQ

How Chinese AI Chatbots Censor Themselves

Researchers from Stanford and Princeton found that Chinese AI models are more likely than their Western counterparts to dodge political questions or deliver inaccurate answers. - WIRED

A World Where All Is Free? That’s Elon Musk’s Theory of ‘Sustainable Abundance.’

The Tesla and SpaceX chief has told his followers that they will live in a world where robots will take care of every need and people do not have to work, in what has become his latest slogan. - NY Times

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User Mag news rundown

• AIs push nuclear war in 95% of simulated war games.

• A Chinese streamer was banned after posting videos of his wife’s 23-hour childbirth to advertise diapers.

• The Pope is begging priests to stop using AI to write sermons.

• Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees, and check if employees say “please” and “thank you.”

• A new app sends users a warning when it detects AI smart glasses being worn nearby.

• Inflation is on the rise again 😭.

• RFK said people who are broke should just eat liver.

• Anthropic launched a Substack newsletter called Claude’s Corner, written by AI, where the AI will be publishing “weekly essays on topics of its choosing.”

• Laura Loomer is trying to sink Tucker’s nicotine pouch brand, alleging violations of tobacco marketing laws.

  

• 4Chan knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s death 38 minutes before the rest of the world. The FBI tried to figure out how.

• PewDiePie said that he trained his own AI model and claims it outperforms ChatGPT on a coding benchmark.

• MrBeast published his worst performing video in years. (It was titled “I built 10 schools around the world.”)

• Crocs just launched a 5-episode microdrama with Hollywood power agency CAA.

• Proposals before the FCC involve mirrored satellites that could bathe entire cities in sunlight from space 24/7, in order to solar power data centers.

• The solar power industry, is now working with MAGA influencers to bolster solar power’s standing via conservative media partnerships.

  

• Teenagers don’t really get summers off anymore, they have to spend their time doing things that will make them competitive for college.

• Google sent an AI push alert with the N word in it.

• For the first time since the 1930s, more people are leaving the US than coming in.

• “Cutting-edge” AI-powered cockroaches are being created for military use.

• A video editor working for MrBeast is accused of trading on insider information on Kalshi.

• Doritos introduces high-protein chips in Nacho Cheese and BBQ flavors.

• A popular right-wing X account that called a video of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes “a masterpiece” is run by a White House staffer.

• The publisher of Out and The Advocate has bought Condé Nast’s LGBT+ publication Them.

• Anthropic is at war with the Pentagon after the AI company said they didn’t want the government using their AI to do evil things.

• Bird populations are falling much faster than previously though.

  

• Twitch streamer Pokimane is now going by her IRL name Imane.

• FedEx will refund customers for Trump’s tariffs, if there ever are any refunds.

• An AI-generated podcast network publishes 11,000 episodes a day, ripping off local media outlets.

• Netflix dropped out of the Warner Brothers Discovery bidding war, paving the way for David Ellison’s Paramount to buy it.

• Multimillionaire ‘Squatty Potty’ creator arrested in Utah for buying child pornography.

• Tampa, Florida’s airport is banning flyers from wearing pajamas and crocs.

• Texas rolled out a “Bible-infused curriculum” which is now in chaos after hundreds of errors were identified.

• Nicki Minaj’s social media is being propped up by thousands of bots, one analysis found. MAGA internet quickly melted down in response and accused the POLITICO story of being some sort of Cardi B hit piece.

  

• Vegetarians have ‘substantially lower risk of cancer, despite what MAHA people claim.

• You’ll soon be able to call a flying car via Uber app in Dubai.

• AI is set to be the defining issue for the 2026 midterm elections.

• There are probably hormone-disrupting chemicals in your headphones.

• A LEGO-style replica of JPMorgan’s new 270 Park skyscraper has an internal waitlist and is listed for $500 on eBay.

• Online gambling app Stake says influencers like Drake and Adin Ross don’t win more than the average gambler. But Bloomberg ran a year-long data investigation into Stake and Kick and found otherwise.

• A man accidentally took control of an army of robot vacuums with a PS5 controller, and could have gained access to their cameras.

• The popular animated show Smiling Friends is ending at Adult Swim.

• I’m very excited about A24’s Backrooms horror movie based on the viral YouTube videos.

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The law I’m talking about is FOSTA-SESTA, and it was the first major “reform” aka carve out to Section 230. The law passed in large part thanks to Facebook’s lobbying, and the consequences of this attack on Section 230 have been devastating.

Today, I’m joined by activist and adult industry content creator Siri Dahl to break down how FOSTA-SESTA came to fruition and forever transformed the web. While the law was sold to the public by celebrities including Amy Schumer as “cracking down on big tech” and making the internet “safer for children,” the result was the mass deplatforming of huge swaths of people, indie sites and smaller communities being forced to shut down, and Meta and Google seizing the ability to amass even more power.

We discuss how FOSTA-SESTA effectively killed and how organizations like NCOSE (aka Morality in Media) and the Heritage Foundation are pushing a moral panic that lawmakers, especially Democrats, are buying into.

If we don’t understand the devastating effects of FOSTA-SESTA, we are doomed to repeat them with new bills like the Sunset Section 230 Act or Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). We must protect Section 230 at all costs!!!

What I’m reading

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The Logging Off Movement Is a Scam

Over the past few years, a massive industry has emerged around dumb phones and the concept of logging off. From $400 minimalist dumb phones to influencers selling digital detox courses, logging off has b…

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Section 230 is the legal foundation for the modern internet. It’s why websites can host comments, forums, reviews, group chats, marketplaces, and social platforms without being sued into oblivion. It’s why Wikipedia exists.

In this video, I break down what Section 230 actually is, why it was created, and how it shaped the internet as we know it. I uncover the forgotten history of the internet, from the early legal battles of CompuServe and Prodigy to the landmark Zeran v. AOL ruling.

I explore why the “Big Tech” narrative is a lie, how repealing Section 230 would actually crush small creators and marginalized communities, and why recent efforts like FOSTA-SESTA have already been a disaster for human rights, marginalized communities, small forums, nonprofits, and independent creators.

Despite what politicians and pundits claim, NONE of this is about protecting big tech companies. The fight over Section 230 is about who controls online speech, who gets a voice, and whether the internet remains an open space for all of us, or becomes a tightly controlled AI-surveilled hellscape dominated by censorship and corporate consolidation.

I dive deep into internet history, free expression and the growing push for mass online censorship. If you care about free speech, online communities, privacy, or the future of the internet (which you should!!!), this fight affects YOU, whether you realize it or not.

This is the first episode in my entirely self-funded and self-produced multi-part series on Section 230. I have zero longstanding advertisers, zero sponsors, zero support from anyone but those of you who pay to subscribe. So please, if you like my work, buy a paid subscription to this newsletter to support me so I can keep this series going!

What I’m reading

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As Mike Masnick writes in TechDirt:

To be clear: most social media companies absolutely design their products with increasing engagement in mind. There are plenty of corporate incentives to keep you using the app longer. And some people genuinely do use social media in ways that harm their lives. Both things can be true while “addiction” remains the wrong frame. The question is whether calling it an addiction actually helps anyone, or whether it just makes people feel powerless.

But there’s a meaningful difference between “this product is designed to form habits” and “this product is chemically addictive like heroin.” A chemical addiction involves tolerance, withdrawal, and physiological dependence. The study found that only about 4% of users reported experiencing anything akin to withdrawal symptoms (restlessness or trouble when prohibited from using) often or very often. The most common “symptom” was simply thinking about Instagram a lot—which probably describes anyone who uses any service frequently.

I think about Techdirt a lot. Am I “addicted” to it?

The addiction framing removes human agency from the equation. It treats users as helpless victims who can’t possibly resist the siren song of the infinite scroll. But the same study that found 2% of users at risk for addiction also found that 50% of frequent users recognized they had habits around Instagram use. Those users aren’t powerless. They can change their environment, their cues, their routines. But first they have to believe that’s possible—and the addiction narrative tells them it isn’t.

It also makes the technology appear inherently harmful, when (as pretty much every study keeps showing) only a very small percentage of people seem to have truly negative experiences with it. That should be cause to create targeted solutions for those who are genuinely struggling, not to declare an entire category of technology dangerous for everyone.

So here we are: lawsuits claiming to protect users from social media’s harms may themselves be contributing to those harms by amplifying the addiction narrative. The lawyers will get paid either way. But if we actually want to help people develop healthier relationships with technology, we could start by not telling them they’re powerless addicts—and instead give them the tools to change their habits.

I sat down with journalist Liz Nolan Brown to break down the bellwether case that could chip away at Section 230 protections and cause immense harm to millions of users. We discuss the lack of scientific evidence linking apps to depression, and why this moral panic is similar to the ones surrounding the telephone, novels, comic books, and television decades ago. WATCH NOW!

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Right wingers have pounced on this drama with Candace Owens, House in Habit, Brett Cooper, and others pushing the idea that Nicola Pelz is yet another “Meghan Markle” and that Brooklyn is “Prince Harry 2.0,” aka another privileged son being manipulated by an evil woman into betraying his family.

Kat Tenbarge joined me to break down what Brooklyn actually said, how tabloids and influencers are distorting the story, why Nicola Peltz was instantly cast as the villain, and what it reveals about how society reacts when men set boundaries with powerful families.

We discuss boy mom culture, media manipulation, and why cutting off family still triggers moral panic. We also talk about how PR machines operate, how smear campaigns are constructed, and why the public constantly blames women for men’s choices.

While this seems like your standard celebrity drama, it actually reveals a lot about how our culture treats men, the normalization of gender-based violence and how propaganda works in the digital age. I hope you’ll watch!!

What I’m reading

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