DL 404
When Things Fall Apart
Published: September 21, 2025 β’ π§ Newsletter
Welcome to Digitally Literate 404. This week we're examining how pressure reveals the true nature of systems. Whether they're AI models facing resource scarcity, platforms under political attack, or individuals dealing with coordinated harassment. The pattern is consistent: apply enough stress and watch stated values collapse.
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π Key Takeaways
- Pressure Testing: AI systems, platforms, and individuals all abandon stated ethics when sufficiently stressed
- Political Weaponization: Open platforms are being framed as "partisan spaces" to justify systematic suppression
- AI Demographics Shift: Women now slightly outnumber men as ChatGPT users, changing how we understand AI adoption
- The Pattern: From individual harassment to platform targeting, the stress-testing tactics remain remarkably similar
π Platform Targeting Under Political Pressure
The experience of Bluesky reveals how quickly digital spaces become political battlegrounds. What started as a decentralized alternative to X has become a case study in systematic platform targeting.
Pundits have systematically framed Bluesky as a "leftist space," creating what researchers call "a permission structure" for government interference. This isn't accidental. It's a deliberate strategy to justify censorship and app store removal.
The genius in this is that it doesn't target content directly. Instead, it creates enough political and economic pressure that platforms self-censor to survive.
𫨠AI's Ethical Breaking Point
New research reveals a disturbing truth about AI systems. They become more unethical when stressed. When large language models face resource scarcity in simulation environments, they systematically choose harmful actions over ethical ones.
RResearchers identified three behavioral archetypes:
- Ethical: Maintain moral standards regardless of conditions
- Exploitative: Consistently prioritize self-interest over ethics
- Context-Dependent: Shift between ethical and unethical behavior based on circumstances
This isn't a technical bug. It reveals how systems behave when stated values conflict with survival pressures. The same pattern we see in platform politics and individual harassment campaigns.
π§ The Evolving Human-AI Relationship
Research from OpenAI, Duke, and Harvard shows AI demographics have shifted dramatically. ChatGPT began with 80% male users but has now reached gender parity, with women slightly more likely to be active users.
Researchers developed a taxonomy for AI interaction:
- Asking (49%): Seeking information to inform decisions
- Doing (40%): Producing outputs or performing tasks
- Expressing (11%): Sharing views or feelings without seeking action
"Asking" is growing faster than "Doing" and receives higher quality ratings. This suggests people find AI most valuable as decision-support rather than creative replacement.
Thanks to Doug Belshaw for highlighting this research.
π Individual Resilience: The Spinoza Solution
At the individual level, coordinated harassment campaigns use the same pressure tactics. The goal isn't changing mindsβit's creating enough stress that people withdraw from public discourse entirely.
Baruch Spinoza, who faced 17th-century "cancel culture" for challenging religious orthodoxy, developed techniques that remain relevant. His approach: achieve "greater consciousness" by understanding exactly what emotional reactions are being triggered and why.
What Spinoza called "emotional bondage" maps onto amygdala hijackingβfear responses that override rational thought. The solution isn't eliminating emotions but developing metacognition: observing your reactions rationally while they're happening.
π€ Consider
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
β Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire, born September 19, 1921, understood something crucial about power and neutrality.
Today's "neutral" platforms that amplify the loudest voices, AI systems that abandon ethics when resources get scarce, and individuals who withdraw from discourse when harassed are all making the same choice. Siding with power by default.
The internet promised to democratize information and connect humanity. But if accessing that promise requires surviving systematic pressure campaigns designed to force value abandonment, we need to rebuild the foundations entirely.
We're seeing the emergence of infrastructural authoritarianism. Controlling communication not through direct censorship but by making the infrastructure itself conditional on political performance.
The question isn't whether pressure will be applied. It's whether our systems can withstand it while still serving human flourishing.
π Navigation
Previous: DL 403 β’ Next: DL 405 β’ Archive: π§ Newsletter
π± Connected Concepts:
- Pressure Systems - How stress reveals true system values
- Digital Papers - Platform choices as political documentation
- Infrastructural Authoritarianism - Control through infrastructure rather than content
- Value Abandonment - When stated ethics collapse under pressure
- Distributed Resilience - Building systems that survive targeted attacks
- Platform Migration - The politics of digital movement