We’ve spent the last decade arguing about misinformation. Platforms built moderation systems. Brands worried about adjacency. Policymakers debated guardrails. The assumption behind all this was simple: there is a shared reality, and the problem is that bad information is distorting it.

Now that assumption is breaking.

In a recent conversation with journalist Nicholas Thompson, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said something that should have landed as a much bigger deal than it did. Asked whether models could be trained on synthetic data, he didn’t hedge much: “I believe you could get there entirely on synthetic data.”

That’s not a technical footnote. That’s a shift in how reality enters the system.

If AI no longer requires grounding in human-created data, then it is no longer anchored in shared human experience. It is learning from its own outputs, from other models, from a recursive loop of generated content. At that point, we are not just distorting reality. We are beginning to manufacture it.

Anil Seth is one of the world’s leading neuroscientists studying consciousness and has spent three decades working on one of the hardest questions in science: what consciousness is and where it comes from. He is professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex in the U.K. and directs the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science.

In Vancouver for a TED conference, he knew exactly who he was talking to and why reaching them now mattered.

TED is an audience of scientists, builders, philosophers and investors. Many of them are betting, some of them literally, on AI becoming conscious in the near future. A few argue it’s not technically achievable.

Seth’s position is more urgent and more unsettling than either camp: It’s not that conscious AI is impossible. It’s that it’s a terrible idea and we should stop trying to build it.

That’s a different argument. And it’s one the room needed to hear.

At TED in Vancouver, I found myself asking a question that, not that long ago, would have felt philosophical, maybe even abstract. Now it feels immediate, and harder to avoid.

So, what does truth mean in today’s world, and does it still function the way we think it does?

The question first came up at a TED Brain Date. A small room, about a dozen people, no stage, no slides, just a circle that filled in as people realized what the topic was.

The group was a mix you only really get at TED. A journalist and NYU professor working in Ghana, focused on how students understand truth in a fragmented media environment. A PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant from India thinking about trust, incentives, and how organizations make decisions when the underlying data is uncertain. A former Reuters reporter now working on credibility scoring systems. An AI founder who has spent decades training language models and recently launched a product he described, somewhat provocatively, as a “lie detector for AI.”

We went around and talked about why we were there. What emerged quickly was that no one was approaching truth as a purely theoretical concept. The journalist talked about students who no longer default to institutional authority. They don’t begin with the New York Times or the BBC. They begin with what shows up in their feeds, or what aligns with their worldview, and they build from there. That shift changes not just what people believe, but how they decide what is worth believing.

In this episode of the Sustainable Media Center’s HubStack Live, Emma Lembke sits down with Gen Z board member and democracy reform advocate Imre Huss for a wide-ranging conversation about youth civic engagement in the digital age.

Huss traces his path into advocacy, shaped by his family’s history in Poland and his own experiences witnessing democratic challenges both abroad and in the United States. From there, the conversation moves into the realities of growing up online, where social media serves as both a powerful tool for connection and a source of fragmentation, misinformation, and algorithm-driven echo chambers.

Together, they explore what happens when a generation gets most of its news from platforms optimized for engagement rather than accuracy, and what it means for democracy when there is no longer a shared baseline of truth. Huss shares insights from his work co-founding a civic tech initiative designed to make reliable, local political information more accessible to young people, and offers a clear critique of how current systems fail to meet that need.

The episode closes with a focus on solutions, from rethinking algorithm design to building tools that encourage exposure to diverse viewpoints. Despite the challenges, Huss makes the case that this moment is also an opportunity, one where a new generation has the tools, urgency, and perspective to help rebuild civic life in a more informed and intentional way.

In a 2017 Meet the Press interview on NBC News, Kellyanne Conway—then serving as counselor to President Trump, uttered two words that reverberated across the country: “alternative facts.” With that phrase, falsehoods were no longer something to correct, they were something to reframe. Not wrong, just different. Not untrue, just another version of reality.

Nine years later, I think about that moment more often than I’d like to admit. Because what once felt like a political deflection now feels like the operating system of the internet.

I notice it when I open my phone. My feed feels coherent, almost too coherent. The opinions line up and the tone is scarily familiar. The content confirms more than it challenges. But then I’m reminded: this isn’t the internet. This is my internet. Someone else’s feed, someone my age, in my city, could look entirely different. We are scrolling through parallel worlds, each one optimized to feel complete.

That is not accidental. That is by design.

The more time we spend engaging with a certain type of content, the more we are shown. Not just more of the same, but more extreme, more emotionally charged, more definitive. These systems are designed to hold our attention, and the easiest way to do that is to give us content that feels right. Content that affirms who we are, what we believe, and how we see the world.

When Donald Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” it didn’t sound like policy. It sounded like extinction. That word, civilization, is doing all the work. It’s not accidental. Trump could have said government, regime, military. He didn’t. He chose a word that collapses everything into one target. People. Culture. History. Identity. One word, total destruction.

This is not a slip of language. It’s a pattern. Trump’s political power has always been rooted in his ability to choose words that expand the frame. He doesn’t argue at the level of policy detail. He jumps levels. Crime becomes “carnage.” Immigration becomes “invasion.” Opponents become existential threats. “Civilization” is the logical endpoint of that escalation. It’s not about winning an argument. It’s about redefining the stakes so completely that there is no middle ground left.

Older audiences tend to hear Trump this way and discount it. They file it under performance. Bluster. The familiar rhythm of exaggeration that defined his first campaign and presidency. They assume the system absorbs it, translates it, reduces it back down to something manageable. They’ve seen political language stretch before.

Gen Z doesn’t process it that way. They’ve grown up inside systems where language doesn’t just describe reality, it shapes it instantly. A phrase doesn’t sit in a speech. It becomes a clip, a post, a headline, an algorithmic signal. It spreads, accelerates, mutates. They understand that extreme language is not just expressive. It’s functional. It is designed to travel. And once it travels, it changes the environment it moves through.

So when they hear “civilization,” they don’t soften it. They don’t translate it into something more reasonable. They take it at face value. And face value, in this case, is absolute.

Maximilian Milovidov is not speaking about social media from a distance. He’s a Columbia freshman, a digital rights advocate, a member of TikTok’s Youth Council, and a NextGen Advisor working at the intersection of young users and the platforms shaping their lives. He sits in a rare position, both inside the system and deeply aware of its consequences.

And it shows up immediately in how he tells his own story.

He doesn’t describe himself as someone who eagerly joined social media. In fact, his instinct was resistance. “I did not enjoy social media platforms,” he explains. “I was kind of the one pushing back against my parents, from getting onto social media… I’d seen documentaries… and I realized the consequences that that could have on me, and I preferred not to engage in that.”

That’s not how we usually talk about Gen Z. The assumption is that they were pulled in before they could understand what they were stepping into. But here is someone who saw the risks early and tried, at least for a while, to stay out.

What changed wasn’t his understanding. It was the environment around him.

Three years ago, this work began as a conversation, not a case. A group of people, some connected and some meeting for the first time, began asking what social media was actually doing to young people, to families, and to the broader culture. There was no single obvious path to change, and for a long time, it was not clear that any of it would break through.

Last week, something did. It felt like a line had been crossed, that we ended a chapter and began a new one.

To understand what changed, it helps to start with how unlikely it was that this case would even reach a jury. Litigation against major technology platforms has historically been stopped early, often before any substantive evidence is examined. Laura Marquez-Garrett, senior counsel at the Social Media Victims Law Center, which represented KGM. in the case, made that clear. “We told the parents, assume we lose. Because the odds are against us. The law is against us. The system is against us.”

The Verdict That Breaks the Pattern

For years, these cases never made it this far.

They died early. Quietly. Predictably.

Motion to dismiss. Case closed. No discovery. No documents. No internal truth.

That was the system.

Last week, that system broke.

A jury found that major social media platforms could be held liable for harm, including findings of oppression, malice, or fraud. The headlines focused on the verdict. The real story is how it happened and what it unlocks next.

At the center of that shift is Laura Marquez-Garrett.

“This is exactly why I wanted to do this call,” I said in a post-verdict discussion with Laura, Frances Haugen, and others who have been working toward this moment for years. “Now we have to keep this going.”

Laura made it clear right away. The verdict is not the end. It’s the beginning.

For nearly three decades, Silicon Valley has relied on a simple legal defense when harm shows up on its platforms: “We didn’t create the content.”

That argument, grounded in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, has been one of the most effective liability shields in modern corporate history. It allowed platforms to scale at global speed while avoiding responsibility for what users post, share, and amplify. Lawsuits were routinely dismissed before they reached discovery. Executives rarely had to testify. The system worked.

What changed last week is not the statute. It’s the reality around it.

In K.G.M. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., et al., a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the design and operation of their platforms, concluding that those failures were a substantial factor in causing harm to a young user. The jury awarded $3 million in damages and assigned 70% responsibility to Meta and 30% to YouTube.

This was not a case about a single post. It was not a case about whether a platform failed to remove content quickly enough. It was a case about how the system itself works.

And the jury found that system wanting.

In this week’s Substack Live conversation, the Sustainable Media Center brings together Emma Lembke and theater creator Patrick McAndrew to explore an unexpected intersection: musical theater and responsible tech. McAndrew’s new production, The Startup, uses humor, storytelling, and live performance to examine some of the most urgent questions in tech today, including social media addiction, data privacy, and the ethical tensions inside startup culture.

The musical follows an idealistic tech company attempting to build a platform without exploiting user data, only to collide with the financial realities that drive today’s digital economy. Through its narrative and immersive audience experience, the show invites viewers to reflect on where the line between ethics and profit gets drawn and what is lost when it is crossed.

The conversation highlights a broader idea at the heart of SMC’s work: that culture, not just policy, can shape how we understand and challenge technology. By translating complex issues into human stories, The Startup aims to reach audiences who might never engage with these topics otherwise and leave them with questions that linger beyond the theater.

Ultimately, the goal is simple but ambitious. If even one audience member walks away thinking differently about their relationship with technology, the work has done its job.

My full-time job is fighting for tech accountability. As SMC’s Director of Gen Z Advocacy, that work has never felt more urgent. But I also have a deep passion for musical theater — and those two worlds rarely intersect. So when I discovered Patrick McAndrew’s The Startup, I was genuinely surprised, and genuinely thrilled.

Through sharp writing, humor, and original music, The Startup offers a compelling exploration of Big Tech’s influence — not just on society at large, but on our individual identities, relationships, and sense of agency. It’s the kind of project that leaves you questioning the platforms you use every day, while also reminding you of something we don’t talk about enough: storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have for critique, reflection, and change. As someone who spends her days in policy briefs and platform accountability battles, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting a musical to stop me in my tracks. This one did.

McAndrew’s journey with The Startup began nearly a decade ago. In 2016, after reading Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, he began to more deeply interrogate the role technology was playing in our lives. What struck him most was not just the scale of digital influence, but its quiet reshaping of human connection — the way screens had begun to substitute for presence, and engagement metrics had begun to substitute for meaning.

In this episode of the Sustainable Media Center’s Substack Live, Emma Lembke sits down with Gen Z board member and high school senior Raziya Palmer, a student at Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts in Harlem, for a candid conversation about growing up in the age of AI and social media.

Raziya offers a grounded, firsthand perspective on how deeply AI has already been woven into student life. What began as a tool like ChatGPT has quickly become embedded across platforms, from search engines to schoolwork. While many students rely on AI to keep up with increasing academic pressure, Raziya raises concerns about what’s being lost: the ability to think critically, struggle through problems, and truly learn.

The conversation expands into the broader role of social media in Gen Z’s daily life. Raziya describes it as both addictive and essential, a space for connection and expression, but also one that shapes identity, attention, and even childhood itself. She points to a cultural shift where younger kids are skipping traditional developmental experiences, influenced instead by algorithm-driven content.

At the same time, she challenges a common assumption: that Gen Z is passively consumed by technology. Instead, she argues that many young people are acutely aware of the trade-offs. In fact, she suggests that older generations may be more vulnerable to AI-driven misinformation, lacking the digital instincts younger users have developed.

The episode closes on a note of balance and responsibility. Raziya calls for healthier tech habits among young people, encouraging a mix of digital and real-world engagement, while urging older generations to better understand the tools shaping their lives. Across both perspectives, one theme stands out: the future of technology isn’t just about innovation, it’s about how intentionally we choose to use it.

Maria Ressa does not issue warnings lightly.

She is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, co-founder and CEO of the investigative newsroom Rappler, and one of the journalists who most clearly documented how social media gets weaponized against democratic institutions. For years she reported on the disinformation networks that helped consolidate power under Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines — watching as coordinated online narratives discredited journalism, fractured public trust, and normalized violence against critics.

That experience is why her latest warning deserves careful attention.

The report is called “First 100 Days of Trump 2.0: Narrative Warfare and the Breakdown of Reality.” It was originally compiled in spring 2025 by The Nerve, a data insights consultancy Ressa helps lead as head of global strategy. The researchers analyzed executive orders, platform dynamics, influencer networks, and narrative patterns across Facebook, X, YouTube, and TikTok during the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term.

Then January 2026 arrived. And the researchers watched their framework play out in real time.

They added a preface — and released the report now.

“The chaos of those early months,” Ressa writes, “was not just political turbulence. It was the systematic importation and evolution of the authoritarian playbook we survived in the Philippines.”

The numbers behind that claim are striking.

Every year, SXSW feels a little different.

Some years it feels like a tech conference with music attached.
Some years it feels like a film festival that got invaded by startups.
And occasionally, it feels like the place where the future quietly shows up before anyone has fully figured out what it means.

This year felt like something else.

It felt like a festival standing at a crossroads.

The AI Conversation Has Arrived

For years, SXSW panels about technology carried a certain optimism. The tone was almost always forward looking. New tools, new platforms, new creators, new ways to connect.

This year the mood shifted.

I’ve met many champions in my life.

My father is a champion of the law. My high school English teacher was a champion of my education. And in 2024, I discovered a true champion for kids’ online safety: the Attorney General of New Mexico, Raúl Torrez.

Right now, if you scroll through social media looking for updates about the war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel, you will see an extraordinary amount of war footage.

Missiles streak across night skies. Drone footage shows explosions blooming across cities. Videos claim to show missile strikes in Tel Aviv or massive explosions in Gulf cities. The clips look and sound real, and they spread with astonishing speed.

But a growing number of them never happened at all.

Investigators and journalists tracking the information about the current conflict have documented waves of AI-generated videos, fabricated satellite images, and manipulated footage circulating online. Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab have flagged multiple viral clips — some accumulating tens of millions of views — as synthetic or recycled from entirely different conflicts.

What’s striking is not simply that these images exist. It’s that the tools required to create them are now widely available.

The messages started showing up in my feed late at night.

Friends posting from the Gulf. Someone in Dubai. Another in Abu Dhabi. A colleague working on a project in Riyadh. The tone was the same in each post: urgency mixed with disbelief.

“Flights are selling out.”

“Does anyone know which airlines are still flying?”

“I just bought three tickets hoping one of them gets me out.”

For years, the global expat world in the Middle East has operated on a quiet assumption. If something goes wrong, you can get on a plane. The airports in Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi are among the busiest aviation hubs on earth. Flights leave constantly for Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Until suddenly they don’t.

As a member of Gen Z, I carry a deep concern for my generation, and I believe you should, too.

Since our infancy, we’ve been labeled many things: Gen Z, “screenagers,” digital natives, and, most troubling of all, the loneliest generation. Recent data shows that 73% of Gen Z report feeling alone sometimes or always. Loneliness is part of the human condition. But when nearly three-quarters of a generation report feeling persistently alone, we are not talking about normal adolescence. We are talking about a pattern.

I have lived the paradox of growing up constantly connected and profoundly isolated. I have felt what it is like to scroll for hours, surrounded by images of other people’s lives, while feeling increasingly distant from my own. I have felt the pressure to curate, to compare, to measure myself against bodies, lifestyles, and achievements filtered through an algorithm that decides what I see and how often I see it.

This is not abstract. It is daily life.

This week on Substack Live at the Sustainable Media Center, Emma Lembke sat down with Steve Rosenbaum and two of the most relentless voices tracking the Los Angeles social media harm trial in real time: Nicki Petrossi and Sarah Gardner.

Nicki is a digital activist and the host of Scrolling to Death and The Heat Is On. Sarah is the founder and CEO of The Heat Initiative and co-host of The Heat Is On. Together, they have become a daily signal in a media environment that is treating a historic trial like a niche story.

And that is the first big takeaway from this episode: the courtroom is full of evidence, testimony, and lived experience. The public conversation is not.

Sarah put it plainly. The reason they decided someone had to cover this case “day in and day out” is not just because it matters, but because we are hearing from the companies in a way we rarely do. When executives and lawyers speak under oath, when internal documents are put on screens, and when decisions get described in the language of product and profit, you learn how these companies actually think. Even when a moment does not land as a headline, it can still teach advocates how to apply pressure elsewhere.

That is what this coverage is: not commentary, but documentation.

It’s one thing to talk about platform harm in panels, reports, and headlines. It’s another to sit in a courtroom and watch the story of social media’s impact on young people get translated into legal arguments, evidentiary rules, and sworn testimony.

This week, Nicki Petrossi, host of the “Scrolling 2 Death” podcast, had one of the very scarce seats in the courtroom in Los Angeles as the first of the social media harms cases moved forward.

She wasn’t there for the optics. She has been tracking this space for years, following the shift from research and advocacy into litigation.

As Petrossi put it, when earlier policy efforts stalled, her focus changed: “I quickly realized, like, no matter what we do… we needed laws. We need help from our lawmakers to help protect our children from predatory companies.”

When that route failed to move quickly enough, she described a pivot toward the courts: “When that failed — for many different reasons… I realized, maybe lawsuits are where it’s at. Maybe some of these big legal tactics can make a difference.”

That is the context for why being in the courtroom now matters. This is not theoretical. This is the arena where product design choices, internal knowledge, and claims of responsibility get tested under oath. As Petrossi put it bluntly, “This is the first time that Mark Zuckerberg was under oath in a court of law having to answer questions about his company and what it does to kids. That is groundbreaking history.”