You might not always have the time, knowledge, or energy to engage critically with the algorithmically-run feeds in your life. In these times, turn them off. Don't use the feed when you are uncritical. Put the phone down. Close the laptop. Touch grass, or sit and stare at a wall. Commit to it. Don't use the device. Don't put it in charge. Do not touch it, if you are not prepared to be in charge.

"Turn it off" works at many levels; it covers a lot of what it means to be in charge of your device. Don't allow it to do more than you are wanting it to do:

• Need to type something out quickly, just to get it out of your mind? Turn the wifi off. Use a text document.
• Need to search something on the internet? Choose one of the search providers that doesn't have a personal, "just for you" algorithm driven experience.
• Need to contact a friend? Do it somewhere else, not on those big social media platforms.
• Want to follow a specific online content creator? Bookmark their page and check it manually, or learn to use a tool you control.

Everyone has to "turn it off" sometimes. You may not (yet) have the complete set of academic or technical skills to get online outside your bubble. Your available time and energy may be too small. In the end, "turn it off" is the common resting place for responsible geeks and responsible laypeople alike. It can always be turned off.

It can always be turned off - but you don't always control the power switch. Your spouse, neighbors, coworkers, etc. are all themselves the targets of extensive invisibly-custom-crafted auto-propaganada machines which spin narratives designed above all to keep them coming back to the feeds that sell them those narratives. You can't turn people off for being filter-bubble-unsavvy, but you can learn to mistrust their claims and opinions. Don't trust them.

Read. Read books. Find out which books to read from sources that aren't algorithmicallydriven.
Computerized analysis tools can genuinely help with finding what to read, but don't hand control of your bookshelf to inscrutable systems that work by tracking ideological appeal or genre similarity - or that can't give a recommendation with any more nuance than "you might like..."

• Worthwhile non-fiction generally has footnotes. A book doesn't have to be taken standing alone - it can tell you the setting and background for specific claims, and you can go verify it. You don't have to trust a book with footnotes. If an author fabricates footnotes, the footnotes themselves make it fairly easy to catch them. You can go "upstream" from a book with footnotes.


• Worthwhile non-fiction almost always has a bibliography and/or recommended sources list. The book is telling you what is going on around the book. Take note. When two books that disagree reference the same source, you might want to know what is happening in that source. Bibliography lets you do this. If footnotes tell you what is "upstream," bibliography tells you the whole landscape. If you start comparing and checking bibliographies, it doesn't take long to catch the pretenders - people who only include their side, or a few "token" sources of the other side, or are just bundling lists of books they clearly haven't read, or aren't dealing with. Bibliography makes it hard to get away with bibliographic crimes.


• Worthwhile non-fiction has always been read by someone else who knows more than you about something relevant. There are professional publications and tools dedicated to helping you find commentary, book reviews, and rebuttals. Even your favorite political commentator might need to be taken to task by a real historian for their misuse of historical evidence. Even a savvy businessman might need to be sharply corrected on claims about the technical aspects of something he works with every day.


• Books are older than you. Books last across generations, and they let you make an end run around today's narratives or censorship. Go deeper. Go older.

Not everything good is printed, but worthwhile non-print (non-fiction) imitates print:

• Does a page provide stable context references? Who wrote it? When did they write it? What is their background? Can the attributions be followed up on and verified?


• Does a blog provide links to back up their claims? Do the links actually back them up?


• Does a social media commentator tell you where they saw a claim? Do they show their work on their own attempt to verify the specific claims?


• Does a Youtuber tell you specific places you can go for the background to what they discuss, or do they just make references to "the way things are" or "what has been happening lately" or similar hand-waving phrases?


• Does a community make efforts to archive and referene core videos, posts, etc. and go back to those throughout a conflict, or do they just heap up reactions to reactions on top of reactions?