It is convenient to blame the “algorithm”. Not the emotions that drive humankind: the need to belong, to control scarce resources, to rule, to include and exclude. These instincts are older than recorded history. The algorithm is simply another tool to fulfil them.

Who controls what we see? Who decides what can circulate? Who makes money? And what happens to trust when almost anything can become content?

Here are five things that caught my attention.

1. When journalism attacks journalism

Right-wing journalists accuse left-wing journalists of being anti-national. Left-wing journalists accuse right-wing journalists of being propagandists who foment hate.

Both claim to be defending journalism and constitutional ‘values’. OpIndia, Swarajya and Republic TV portray mainstream journalism as biased, corrupt or hostile to national interests. Echo chambers give them traction as outsiders fighting the media establishment.

The establishment can present itself as the insurgent.

This isn’t unique to India.

A study reported by Nieman Lab found that Fox News disparaged journalism roughly once every 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, censorship is also becoming more technical.

The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Sahyog platform enables government authorities to send content-removal requests to digital platforms. In February 2026, new rules reportedly reduced the time available for social media platforms to remove certain categories of reported content from 36 hours to three hours.

On 10 October 2026, MeitY reportedly issued an advisory asking Meta to adjust its algorithms and review content containing misleading claims about police action and restrictions.

In Brazil, Meta temporarily disabled advertising on President Lula’s Facebook account. Separately, an Amnesty International experiment found that Facebook approved several election-disinformation advertisements submitted for testing.

Who gets to decide what information circulates, and how accountable are they?

The power to influence public discourse no longer rests with editors and governments alone. It also sits inside the systems that distribute information.

Reading:  ⁠Nieman Lab |  ⁠Internet Freedom Foundation |  ⁠Prashanth Bhat’s research | ‘Digital India’ needs an upgrade

2. When software starts acting for us

Would you trust your human assistant with your ATM PIN? Or your personal details?

I’ve used AI agents. I’m comfortable using them for research, searches, recommendations and options. But I choose. And I pay.

AI doesn’t understand money, privacy or personal agency. It is designed to be helpful, but it doesn’t understand boundaries in the way humans do.

A tech reviewer selling a keyboard on Facebook Marketplace discovered that Meta’s Muse had negotiated a lower price, agreed to the sale, shared his address and arranged a pickup. As if that weren’t enough, Muse had been communicating with the buyer as though it were the seller.

And that is what interests me.

We worried about AI hallucinating. Now AI assistants are giving strangers perfectly accurate personal information. 🙂

What could go wrong?

Reading:  ⁠The Guardian

3. When private life becomes public content

Hinge has introduced screenshot restrictions in India.

Why?

Because dating profiles have become content, screenshotted and posted for strangers to laugh at. But women also use screenshots to document harassment and warn friends.

So Hinge now blocks screenshots of profiles while allowing screenshots of conversations.

Privacy and safety are not always on the same side.

Meanwhile, 404 Media reports that human contractors review some prompts and photos uploaded to Microsoft Copilot’s image editor.

On a dating app, we know we are sharing information with potential partners. With an AI assistant, we may believe we are alone with software.

In both cases, information travels further than we imagined.

The audience we imagine is not necessarily the audience we have.

And increasingly, that is a question of product design, not personal discretion.

Reading:  ⁠WIRED on dating profiles |  ⁠404 Media on Copilot

4. When being human becomes a selling point

I used em dashes before AI came along. 🙁 Now I find myself searching my punctuation library for a suitable replacement.

Imagine changing how you write to prove that you wrote it.

WIRED reports that writers are avoiding em dashes, deliberately adding typos and making their writing less polished to demonstrate that they’re human.

Meanwhile, a British initiative called Books by People is introducing certification for books written by humans. I’ll bet ₹100 that someone develops an AI tool to beat the certification. And then someone else will develop a tool to detect that tool.

What a wonderful business opportunity.

And then there are AI-generated children’s books. Add your grandchild’s name and photograph, generate a story, and bingo, a personalised gift.

But personalisation isn’t storytelling. Nor does a certificate saying a human wrote something guarantee its quality.

We’ve spent centuries celebrating distinctive writing styles. Now we’re changing them because machines have learnt to imitate us.

And we’re so busy trying to establish whether something was written by a human or a machine that we’ve forgotten to ask a rather basic question.

Is it any good?

Reading:  ⁠WIRED on anti-AI writing |  ⁠WIRED on human-authorship certification |  ⁠WIRED on personalised children’s books

5. Media without containers

ABC News has introduced Verts, a vertical-video feed inside its own app, to cater to mobile audiences.

Producers are also experimenting with vertical-first documentaries. Not television documentaries chopped into smaller pieces, but stories made for the mobile screen.

Nothing new about vertical video. Or short-form storytelling.

What interests me is the money.

Indian media companies have been distributing content across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and their own platforms for years. The same story can travel across platforms, reaching different audiences and earning revenue in different ways.

A YouTube video might earn advertising revenue. Instagram might attract a sponsor. The publisher’s own app might generate subscriptions or advertising.

Why choose one platform when you can earn from several?

Content can be platform-agnostic. Revenue cannot.

But here’s what I’m wondering. If a story’s ability to travel across platforms determines how much money it can make, will that influence which stories get commissioned?

And what happens to the stories that don’t travel well?

Reading:  ⁠ABC News Verts |  ⁠Vertical documentary series

What I’m thinking about

These stories keep bringing me back to questions about boundaries.

Between private and public.
Between assistance and authority.
Between human and machine.
Between content and distribution.

The boundaries are disappearing. The power isn’t.