Much of the debate on disinformation still assumes that manipulation spreads through public platforms. When people increasingly turn to conversational systems to interpret events, political influence can move from public feeds into private dialogue 🔗

Last week I presented the latest developments of my research on AI companions and disinformation. Synthetic friends raise uncomfortable questions about how influence works when it moves from public feeds into private conversations. 🔗

If Iran regime falls, Russia loses one of its key allies in the aggression against Ukraine.

A new hybrid front Is opening on European western front. We should update the list of FIMI actors and start protecting citizens from disinformation narratives coming from where we did not expect.

I think it's sadly time to expand the list of FIMI actors beyond Russia and China. www.ft.com/content/f869...

Hold on, this thing has a name... it was called co... col... colo... ah, I can't remember. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/u...

[surprised pikachu] www.ft.com/content/674b...

Bitchat is a reminder of something we keep forgetting: the internet is not a switch, it’s a network. It was built to route around damage, even extreme disruption. You can shut down access points, but the network logic adapts. www.reuters.com/business/med...

I keep saying this: tech companies cannot be trusted with public health. Without oversight, they will always push boundaries in their own interest. mashable.com/article/goog...

Strong analogy, but the damage goes deeper. In markets, broken contracts create instability. In politics, broken contracts erase obligation. Trump isn’t just extracting value from politics, he’s showing that political commitments no longer bind.

What if the core democratic challenge today isn’t fixing information, but preserving the ability to decide together under conditions of permanent disagreement? The last Future Frontiers issue of 2025 is a reflection on orientation, not prediction.

We talk a lot about misinformation and polarization. But 2025 revealed many of the frameworks we still rely on no longer help societies translate disagreement into shared decisions. 📬 This is the last issue of Future Frontiers for 2025. See you next year!

The so-called “global censorship-industrial complex” is a tiny world of academics and NGOs, journalists, and disinformation researchers who for the last decade have been trying to understand the power and reach of the tech platforms and how they are invisibly manipulating our information spaces.

We are in a post-disinformation phase where the core problem is no longer false content, but the collapse of shared standards for knowledge and collective action. This matters for security too. I connect these dots in this week’s Future Frontiers.

The US willingness to act alone is not new. What’s new is the reason behind it. Democratic values once justified unilateral action; today they are treated as constraints. 📬 This week in Future Frontiers, I try to explain why that matters, especially for Europe.

When Merz says the “American peace” as Europeans knew it is over, he’s pointing to a long shift, not a sudden break. 📬 This week in Future Frontiers, I look at how US security thinking evolved from post-9/11 universalism to today’s far narrower logic. open.substack.com/pub/massimof...

I wrote about the strange sensation of knowing more while understanding less, and how this shapes the future of journalism. The piece is less a verdict and more an open question. How do we build shared reality in a fragmented information climate.

Media debates often ask how to fix newsrooms or regulate platforms, but what if the real crisis is that stories no longer stay. This week Future Frontiers reflects on journalism as a space where orientation might still be built.

Sometimes it feels like we are living inside an information climate rather than an information system. 📬 This week Future Frontiers explores what happens when journalism can no longer guarantee a shared foundation for public understanding. open.substack.com/pub/massimof...

That's what a russian asset would do. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The real challenge today is not the volume of information but the pathway it follows through our minds. This week in Future frontiers I look at how attention and identity now guide the first steps of understanding.

Hey, but what about Hunter and his laptop? www.ft.com/content/952f...

I have been thinking about how attention works today. Not the usual story of distraction, but the deeper shift in how ideas reach us. Emotion sets the tone, identity frames the reaction and reasoning negotiates what remains.

I keep returning to the idea that the feed does not only show us things. It sets the order in which we feel, align and only later think. 📬 This week in Future Frontiers a piece about this quiet shift in public understanding. open.substack.com/pub/massimof...

Russia’s move in Armenia follows a tested script. Undermine an independent government, flood the infosphere, then escalate when soft pressure fails. Georgia showed the pattern. So did Ukraine. The goal remains a return to old borders. www.dw.com/en/russias-d...

And Remigration, a common political stance from the far-right, linked to the conspiracy theory of the "Great Replacement", enters once more into governments' policies. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The real #AI battle isn’t just about money or state laws. It’s about who controls the window through which we all see the world. When a few actors shape the models, the platforms and the cues we rely on, the concentration stops being economic and becomes epistemic. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/tech...

There’s a growing market of synthetic friends. The problem is the silent shift they trigger in how people form bonds, seek validation, and outsource judgment. We’re still underestimating the structural impact of this tech. I explored this in more detail here: 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/massimof...

Still not convinced about the web enshittification? 🇺🇸 Americans looking for ACA plans on Google are met with for-profit telemarketing companies. www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

💭 One thing that surprised me in this research: people often describe stability, not novelty, as the main value of AI companions. The appeal isn’t in the tech. It’s in the emotional predictability. If you’ve seen this trend, how do you interpret it?

Working on AI companions has made me wonder: what happens when emotional support becomes a personalised service? Not in theory, but in everyday life. If you’ve seen people rely on these systems, how does it look from your side? 🧠 Curious to hear thoughts.

#AI companions are not just tools. They’re shaping how people build emotional worlds. This shift touches loneliness, identity and the way shared reality is formed. If you study democracy, tech, mental health or culture, this one is for you.

Beyond diplomacy and targets, COP30 is a test of whether societies can still cooperate in good faith. The ecology of information and the ecology of the planet are now inseparable. Without rebuilding trust, even the best agreements remain suspended. 🔗

🗺️ Each COP repeats the same cycle of urgency, hope, and disappointment, but something deeper is breaking. The moral narrative that once inspired action now exhausts it. 🔗

As #COP30 begins in Belém, leaders will talk about carbon and finance, but the hardest task is to restore belief. People are tired, skeptical, and flooded with noise. The real question is whether we still trust each other enough to act. 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/massimof...

Yeah, and in Virginia a centrist democratic candidate won. The lesson is: choose a strong candidate with a clear platform and you'll win. 🇺🇸

Weaponizing electoral observers is something I've professionally witnessed in troubled countries, never expecting to see it in 🇺🇸 USA. Nothing good comes out playing with the rules of the game. slate.com/news-and-pol...

After 9/11 and 2008, the West turned inward, managing risk instead of imagining progress. Europe made that caution a political system. 📬 This week on Future Frontiers, I ask what it would take to recover democratic confidence.

Europe once moved forward by acting before it was ready. Now it waits for crises to justify action. 📬 This week on Future Frontiers, I explore what happens when institutions built for courage become systems of caution.

Last week I heard Margrethe Vestager say: “The fight for democracy is for the many. That’s the very point.” 📬 This week on Future Frontiers, I ask what happens when Europe, once built on courage, starts fearing its own power.

Economic growth once felt like a path to freedom. Now it often feels like a substitute for it. I’ve been reflecting on how prosperity can stabilize control instead of dispersing it. What makes a society truly free in your view?

We often confuse noise with strength. The groups that really shape history are rarely the loudest but the most coherent. What’s one place where you see small groups shaping big outcomes?

Most of what we believe about power is comforting fiction. Majorities, progress, control: none behave as we imagine. 📬 This week Future Frontiers issue is about 5️⃣ illusions that distort how we see politics. Which illusion feels most real to you right now? open.substack.com/pub/massimof...

Synthetic intimacy is the new frontier of information manipulation. SamAltman's shift to allow 🫦 'erotica' at OpenAI confirms the commercial institutionalization of affective capture. When mass attention plateaus, personalized intimacy becomes the new engagement driver.

After reading too many American think pieces about “polarization,” I started asking a simpler question: What if anger isn’t the symptom, but the product?

I sometimes wonder if democracies burn out rather than break down. 😡 Outrage is addictive, and the platforms have turned it into a renewable fuel.

I keep wondering if democracy’s biggest threat isn’t collapse but exhaustion. Outrage has become the only emotion we still know how to share. 📬 I wrote about how this emotional pattern reshapes our idea of politics on this week issue of Future Frontiers.

Australia’s teen social media ban shows what happens when governments mistake control for care. You can’t legislate bad parenting, because each “safety” shortcut expands surveillance and shrinks autonomy. This isn’t digital hygiene, it’s digital infantilisation. www.crikey.com.au/2025/10/10/t...

Hybrid warfare doesn’t just target borders. It targets the logic of democracy itself — trust, legitimacy, restraint. 🇲🇩 Moldova is showing in miniature what happens when a democracy faces an enemy that never plays fair. The lessons are global.

The real test of democracy isn’t whether it wins elections, but how it behaves when the rules are weaponized against it. Moldova’s vote last week was small in scale, huge in meaning. Every democracy under pressure — including the U.S. — should be watching closely.