Lost in the Cycle
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 9.25.25
It is easy for us to become consumed by the 24-hour news cycle. There is so much information being created every day that it is impossible to keep track of it all. We must constantly release the previous day’s stories from our memory to make room for today’s. The result is that we are often too quick to forget.
For instance, take last week’s cancellation and subsequent reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Some of us were astonished by his remarks and applauded the show being removed from the air.
Meanwhile, some of us were shocked to see the current administration pressure networks and broadcasters to remove the show. We viewed this as a violation of our First Amendment rights and a disturbing use of authority to limit the reach of dissenting voices.
Despite the critical importance of a free press in maintaining a stable democracy, the constitutional protections of our freedom of speech only apply to the public sphere. As long as private corporations have control over the channels of distribution, they are free to remove content at their will.
Even after ABC returned the show to their lineup, some broadcasting networks made the decision to air different programming during the time slot at their ABC affiliate stations, further demonstrating how censorship can arise from the network, the broadcasters, or any weak link in our infrastructure for distributing information.
This conflict is only the most recent example of our deepening political divides, showing how our support of or opposition to censorship pressure splits across partisan lines. Yet, just five years ago, these roles were reversed. The House Judiciary Committee released findings on Tuesday that the previous administration pressured Google to deplatform creators from YouTube for sharing dissenting opinions during the COVID-19 pandemic. This aligns with previous findings that the same administration pressured Meta to censor Facebook content during the same period.
The reversal of policy and outrage makes it clear that control of the media narrative is powerful, but only supported when it aligns with our beliefs. Those who are capable of leveraging this control to censor opposing points of view will be quick to wield it once given the chance, which has held true throughout history. Once a media platform has gained societal relevance, they inevitably face pressure from powerful forces to control the narrative.
The only solution is to remove the centralized mechanisms of control from our information distribution infrastructure altogether. If we share our information in public, we can trust that our First Amendment rights will be upheld.
With Aemula, we utilize new decentralized infrastructure to ensure that all viewpoints are resistant to censorship by any centralized authority. Individuals own their content and their data on an immutable, public ledger, and information is shared over a peer-to-peer network. Moderation and governance are handled by democratic community votes. When attempts to censor Aemula inevitably arise, they will find no success. Even if we wanted to give in to these pressures, we would not be able to.
Aemula is verifiably neutral, censorship resistant, and free of outside influence, so you can trust that the information you use to form your worldview is shielded from manipulation.
This week, we highlight writers who are discussing censorship, trust, and information distribution in our current environment. We encourage you to explore their work and consider subscribing directly!
blindspots
Written by Jordan Myska Allen, founder of UpTrust and The Relateful Company and author of A Beautiful Apocalypse, writing about Relatefulness, integral leadership, and civilizational alignment through improved internet dialogue and algorithmic advancements.
“If fact checking could get us out of this mess, wouldn’t Wikipedia have solved it?
The issue isn’t that we lost “truth” as some platonic object out there. No one is debating how many hydrogen atoms a water molecule has.
The issue is sorting our opinions about facts.1
(…)
But since we have no principled way of sorting these opinions, we sort by engagement. And the most naive way to get engagement is controversy, which is good for platforms that sell engagement
(…)
The solution according to UpTrust is to recognize that some opinions are better than others, relative to a particular domain and context, and to constantly show and adjust this based on new information.2
Better how? More trustworthy.
More trustworthy to whom? Each individual, based on who their network of most trusted people most trust.”
Kyla’s Newsletter
Written by Kylan Scanlon, author of In this Economy?: How Money and Markets Really Work and macroeconomic commentator and educator with work featured in publications such as The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance, previously featured in our spotlight, “Collapse”.
“Why does this matter? Because controlling the means of mass communication means controlling the narrative. It’s the attention economy version of a monopoly. When one person (or a small elite) owns the newspapers, the TV stations, and the social media platforms, there is no room for alternate voices.
But it’s sort of like… everyone gets their own information ecosystem. Elon Musk owns Twitter, which he leveraged into helping Trump win the 2024 election. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and has nudged into being more accommodating. Mark Zuckerberg controls an empire of social apps and has faced repeated accusations of algorithmic bias.
When information is power and attention is currency, of course the people with the most money will try to buy the most influence.”
Koenfucius’s Substack
Written by Koen Smets, a behavioral economist and educator who explores curious moments of human behavior through weekly essays that blend observation, inquiry, and insight into why we act the way we do.
“If a government I was sympathetic to pursued its policies by invoking ‘special circumstances’ so they could appropriate lawmaking powers from the legislative, that would be OK with me; with a different party in power, I would be a fervent opponent to such practices. To me, government power grab was certainly antidemocratic… but I happily made an exception when it suited me. Looking through an evolutionary lens, such exceptionalism would seem to be innate.”
Are you writing on Substack? You can easily set up automatic cross-posting with Aemula to instantly:
Increase your earnings
Expand your audience
Verifiably own your work
Plus, you will have opportunities to access community resources and grants to support the content you want to create!
Link your Substack to your Aemula account using this link or send a quick email to writers@aemula.com to get started!
No cost, no obligations, and you can stop at any time.
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If you want to support any of the writers we spotlight in our Substack, we highly encourage you to subscribe to their individual publications.
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Any writers you want to see featured here? Send them our way! We are always searching for great new publications.
