Freedoms in American life, as in so many civilizations before us, do not vanish straight away. They are reduced bit-by-bit, and we often fail to notice their absence until it is too late. Each loss is obscured by a constant stream of distractions, designed or otherwise, but almost always designed. They pull attention away from any threat of loss and into the chaos as something essential slips away unnoticed behind us.

What disappears then becomes a precedent. And what becomes a precedent is soon accepted. In time, what once would have provoked disbelief among us comes to feel ordinary, even normal.

But the most dangerous shift may be this: the concentration of economic power into systems so driven by private gain and so technologically advanced that they now influence what we see and hear, whom we trust, and even how we come to fear or despise one another. Let that sink in…

I believe the first step is to recognize how we have become subject to the design itself. For these conditions are not accidental. They are rooted in behavioral science, refined through data, and deployed at scale across numerous privately held internet platforms.

We may call it “Internet Content,” but propaganda is most often the more apt term. And it is within that environment that division can be advanced—not always through what is illegal, but through what is allowed.

Because too many of us have relied on systems that were not designed for truth, and we must have access to one that is.