In a world where protest is met with surveillance, social media has become both a battleground and a lifeline. For many, it is the only space left to document injustice, organize communities, and tell stories that mainstream media refuses to carry. Yet the very platforms that claim to “connect the world” the Metas and TikToks of our time are far from neutral. They are infrastructures of control, built to measure and monetize our attention.
What began as digital connection has become a marketplace of distraction. Every notification, every scroll, every algorithmic “suggestion” is designed to keep us inside the feed — feeding it in return. The business model is simple: capture attention, convert emotion, and sell both to the highest bidder. Our presence has become a product.
Behind the feed, invisible power moves quietly. The same financial giants who fund weapons manufacturers, surveillance tech, and fossil fuel corporations BlackRock, Vanguard, and their peers also own vast shares of the platforms shaping our digital lives. The pipelines of profit run from our timelines to global systems of extraction and exploitation.
When we post, teach, or protest online, we’re forced into contradiction. We use the tools of the very structures we resist. We depend on platforms that surveil, censor, and profit from our pain — even as we try to build something better. Digital resistance, then, is not only about what we say online. It’s about how we exist online. It is the act of reclaiming the terrain of our attention. (more...)
Social Media as a Site of Resistance: Reclaiming Our Digital Power
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