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.

When a democracy is attacked through lies, money, and manipulation, its hardest battle isn’t with the attacker, it’s with itself. 🇲🇩 Moldova just showed what happens when a state fights #disinformation and interference without losing its democratic soul.

Extremist forums reward transgression the way markets reward profit. Not for what you believe, but for how far you’ll go. How do you regulate that economy of clout?

❔ Which is harder to counter: extremists who shout their beliefs, or those who hide them in jokes and memes? That’s where much of today’s radicalization actually happens.

The Charlie Kirk case raised a question we rarely face: when violence looks more like trolling than ideology, how do we even begin to make sense of it? 📬 My take on Future Frontiers. Curious how others see this.

🇺🇸 America once exported democracy to Europe. Today parts of Washington are legitimizing the very movements that weaken it. The paradox is that influence hasn’t stopped, it has only changed its direction. 🧭 Does this strengthen or undermine the alliance? massimoflore.medium.com/us-populism-...

What looked impossible in February has happened: Zelensky flipped Trump. Today Trump praises 🇺🇦Ukraine and ridicules 🇷🇺Russia’s army. A reminder that careful diplomacy can move even the most volatile allies. The risk? Trump’s support can vanish as fast as it appeared. www.wsj.com/world/how-ze...

"Trump advisers are also weighing whether to review the tax-exempt status of left-leaning nonprofit groups". This is Orbánism transposed to the US. The same scapegoat, the same legalistic tools repurposed for political warfare, the same narrative of “enemy within”. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

The idea of restricting minors access to social media is understandable. The problem is the tools: ID checks, databases, backdoors. These don’t protect children, they expose everyone. The challenge is finding safeguards that don’t turn into vulnerabilities. 🔗

Where journalism collapses, disinformation thrives. “News deserts” are never neutral, they are filled by conspiracy, outrage, and algorithmic noise. Supporting resilient media is not cosmetic, it is the foundation that keeps democracy from hollowing out. 🔗

🇪🇺 The 2025 State of the Union shifted the tone: disinformation is no framed as an attack on Europe’s democratic foundations. A common shield is the Commission’s answer, yet every shield can also become a cage. Which direction are we taking? 🔗

AI hasn’t killed truth. But it has made truth lose traction. Skepticism keeps us careful. Cynicism leaves us stuck. Which side wins will decide more than elections, it will decide whether we can share a reality at all.

Remember when a picture was worth a thousand words? Now it’s worth a thousand doubts. The real shift isn’t deepfakes flooding the net, it’s that proof has lost its punch. What do we lean on when evidence doesn’t convince anymore? open.substack.com/pub/massimof...

👾 If any embarrassing clip can be waved away as AI, what happens to accountability? We don’t need a flood of deepfakes. We just need the possibility of them. That alone lets the powerful grin and say: “Wasn’t me.” More here:

🌀 Gates Foundation says they cut ties with Arabella for efficiency. Sure. But it happens while Trump is making donors think twice about who they fund. 👹 When fear of backlash guides philanthropy, even “neutral” money gets political. That’s how pluralism erodes. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...

The QAnon universe, now absorbed into MAGA, still interprets Trump’s most ordinary gestures as coded signals. Even a photo without a tie becomes “proof” that something is happening. 🔮 A millenarian, apocalyptic mindset turning the everyday into prophecy.

Putin is in Alaska trying to con a diplomatic victory out of the US because Ukraine has stopped him from achieving military victory in Europe.

I'm currently writing a paper on the dangers of AI companions. While we are focused on generated content, there a increasingly number of lonely people who clings to artificial friendship with unregulated machines developed by profit driven tech companies.

Russia and China are actively engaging in a new kind of conflict, one that targets infrastructure, information, and influence. Yet most democracies remain caught in outdated frameworks, still approaching security through the Cold War lens of deterrence. www.euractiv.com/section/poli...

You perform a self. The network replies. You adjust. That loop isn’t about truth. It’s about staying visible. The Social Network as a parable of belief optimization. 🔗

Who are you, when feedback loops train your beliefs? A short reflection on The Social Network, platform identity, and belief as signal. 🔗

When your beliefs are seen before they’re formed, the self becomes reactive. What if platforms don’t just shape thought—but reshape identity? The Social Network takes us there. 🔗

Why did you clap? Because the room clapped. And then the room became a movement. Belief is a shared performance before it is an idea. 🔗