Massimo Flore
@massif.bsky.social
Exploring how narratives exploit our fears and desires.
Revealing the hidden battlefield of the information age.
Weekly insights → https://massimoflore.substack.com/
Revealing the hidden battlefield of the information age.
Weekly insights → https://massimoflore.substack.com/
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...
🔗 open.substack.com/pub/massimof...
November 26, 2025 at 9:11 PM
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...
🔗 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...
🇺🇸 Americans looking for ACA plans on Google are met with for-profit telemarketing companies.
www.bloomberg.com/features/202...
Americans Googling Obamacare Are Finding 'Junk Insurance' Instead
During open enrollment, ads from telemarketers are crowding out official health exchanges.
www.bloomberg.com
November 23, 2025 at 4:11 PM
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...
🇺🇸 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?
If you’ve seen this trend, how do you interpret it?
Life Inside the Epistemic Cocoon
How AI Companions Turn Loneliness into a Private Reality and Redraw the Boundaries of the World We Share
open.substack.com
November 20, 2025 at 8:07 AM
💭 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?
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.
If you’ve seen people rely on these systems, how does it look from your side?
🧠 Curious to hear thoughts.
Life Inside the Epistemic Cocoon
How AI Companions Turn Loneliness into a Private Reality and Redraw the Boundaries of the World We Share
open.substack.com
November 18, 2025 at 8:12 AM
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.
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.
If you study democracy, tech, mental health or culture, this one is for you.
Life Inside the Epistemic Cocoon
How AI Companions Turn Loneliness into a Private Reality and Redraw the Boundaries of the World We Share
open.substack.com
November 17, 2025 at 8:12 AM
#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.
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.
🔗
🔗
The Climate of Belief: Environmental Millenarism and the Politics of Trust
How identity, emotion, and information have turned climate action into a struggle over who deserves to be believed.
open.substack.com
November 13, 2025 at 8:07 AM
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.
🔗
🔗
The Climate of Belief: Environmental Millenarism and the Politics of Trust
How identity, emotion, and information have turned climate action into a struggle over who deserves to be believed.
open.substack.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:12 AM
🗺️ 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...
🔗 open.substack.com/pub/massimof...
The Climate of Belief: Environmental Millenarism and the Politics of Trust
How identity, emotion, and information have turned climate action into a struggle over who deserves to be believed.
open.substack.com
November 10, 2025 at 11:03 AM
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...
🔗 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.
🇺🇸
The lesson is: choose a strong candidate with a clear platform and you'll win.
🇺🇸
Mamdani’s win in NYC has lessons for the Democratic Party. But can Democrats agree on what those lessons are?
Tune in for live analysis:
Tune in for live analysis:
Election Analysis: The Winners, Losers and Lessons
YouTube video by Bloomberg Opinion
www.youtube.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Yeah, and in Virginia a centrist democratic candidate won.
The lesson is: choose a strong candidate with a clear platform and you'll win.
🇺🇸
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...
Nothing good comes out playing with the rules of the game.
slate.com/news-and-pol...
Trump’s “Election Observers” Are a Sign of Something Much Worse on the Horizon
None of the election monitors will have much to do. That doesn't mean they’re not damaging.
slate.com
October 31, 2025 at 8:05 PM
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...
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 made that caution a political system.
📬 This week on Future Frontiers, I ask what it would take to recover democratic confidence.
When Europe Stopped Believing in Its Future
From Maastricht’s courage to today’s caution, Europe built institutions without conviction, and now hesitates to shape the world it once imagined.
open.substack.com
October 30, 2025 at 8:07 AM
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 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.
📬 This week on Future Frontiers, I explore what happens when institutions built for courage become systems of caution.
When Europe Stopped Believing in Its Future
From Maastricht’s courage to today’s caution, Europe built institutions without conviction, and now hesitates to shape the world it once imagined.
open.substack.com
October 28, 2025 at 8:12 AM
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.
📬 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.
📬 This week on Future Frontiers, I ask what happens when Europe, once built on courage, starts fearing its own power.
When Europe Stopped Believing in Its Future
From Maastricht’s courage to today’s caution, Europe built institutions without conviction, and now hesitates to shape the world it once imagined.
open.substack.com
October 27, 2025 at 8:12 AM
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.
📬 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?
I’ve been reflecting on how prosperity can stabilize control instead of dispersing it. What makes a society truly free in your view?
Five Political Illusions: Why Our Intuitions About Power Keep Failing Us
How small groups, hidden systems, and cognitive bias quietly shape political outcomes and why understanding them is the new form of strategic literacy.
open.substack.com
October 23, 2025 at 7:07 AM
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?
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?
What’s one place where you see small groups shaping big outcomes?
Five Political Illusions: Why Our Intuitions About Power Keep Failing Us
How small groups, hidden systems, and cognitive bias quietly shape political outcomes and why understanding them is the new form of strategic literacy.
open.substack.com
October 21, 2025 at 7:12 AM
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?
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...
📬 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...
Five Political Illusions: Why Our Intuitions About Power Keep Failing Us
How small groups, hidden systems, and cognitive bias quietly shape political outcomes and why understanding them is the new form of strategic literacy.
open.substack.com
October 20, 2025 at 9:34 AM
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...
📬 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.
Two Months Ago, Sam Altman Was Boasting That OpenAI Didn't Have to Do Sexbots. Now It's Doing Sexbots
Just two months ago, Altman boasted that OpenAI hadn't "put a sexbot avatar in ChatGPT yet." Now, it announced that it will allow for that.
futurism.com
October 19, 2025 at 9:51 AM
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?
The Pendulum of Anger and Why the West Can’t Calm Down
How Outrage Became the Language of Modern Society
open.substack.com
October 16, 2025 at 7:07 AM
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.
😡 Outrage is addictive, and the platforms have turned it into a renewable fuel.
The Pendulum of Anger and Why the West Can’t Calm Down
How Outrage Became the Language of Modern Society
open.substack.com
October 14, 2025 at 7:12 AM
I sometimes wonder if democracies burn out rather than break down.
😡 Outrage is addictive, and the platforms have turned it into a renewable fuel.
😡 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.
📬 I wrote about how this emotional pattern reshapes our idea of politics on this week issue of Future Frontiers.
The Pendulum of Anger and Why the West Can’t Calm Down
How Outrage Became the Language of Modern Society
open.substack.com
October 13, 2025 at 7:12 AM
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.
📬 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...
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...
How Australian teens are already planning to dodge the social media ban
TikTok is filled with videos of teens sharing information about ways to circumvent Australia's teen social media ban.
www.crikey.com.au
October 10, 2025 at 5:07 PM
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...
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.
🇲🇩 Moldova is showing in miniature what happens when a democracy faces an enemy that never plays fair. The lessons are global.
There Is No Periphery
Moldova’s Election and the Shape of Hybrid War
open.substack.com
October 9, 2025 at 7:07 AM
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.
🇲🇩 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.
Moldova’s vote last week was small in scale, huge in meaning. Every democracy under pressure — including the U.S. — should be watching closely.
There Is No Periphery
Moldova’s Election and the Shape of Hybrid War
open.substack.com
October 7, 2025 at 7:12 AM
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.
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.
🇲🇩 Moldova just showed what happens when a state fights #disinformation and interference without losing its democratic soul.
There Is No Periphery
Moldova’s Election and the Shape of Hybrid War
open.substack.com
October 6, 2025 at 7:12 AM
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.
🇲🇩 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?
When Extremism Becomes Performance
What the assassination of Charlie Kirk reveals about how online culture incubates violence
open.substack.com
October 2, 2025 at 7:07 AM
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?