With your advocacy and support, we’ve been busy in the Civic Works labs (https://civ.works). Based on our main premise that any meaningful attempt at democracy requires an informed, educated, and engaged society, we are announcing two main projects.

A New Media Pipeline

Addressing algorithmic inequality in the fight against fascism.

Newspapers, magazines, broadcast television and radio, and social media have all consolidated into the ownership hands of a few. Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and now Larry and David Ellison now control massive media platforms.

A growing number of people consume news through social media.

For several years, we have piloted methods to use social media to strengthen democracy. This is because the leading commercial platforms are controlled by billionaires.

Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg controls Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Tik Tok is now falling under the control of Larry Ellison. This means that important investigative stories such as the Panama, Paradise, and Pandora papers -about trillions of dollars hoarded and parked offshore would never see the light of day. While there are still excellent investigative journalists -their articles and findings rely upon social, print, and broadcast media pipelines to see the light of day and reach us.

If the Watergate and Pentagon Papers stories broke today -would we ever see them on national news broadcasts? Perhaps a few words between the weather report and sports scores?

A simple view of the media pipeline looks like the following:

Event —> Journalist —> Editorial —> Distribution/Platform(s) —> News Consumer.

The Media Pipeline: https://bomdia.substack.com/i/150085714/the-pipeline

We are in the process now of building a small web pilot, as a project of the 501c3 non-profit, Civic Works. It is a bridge between an open source publishing system for authors, that is far better than Substack, and Bluesky (a decentralized replacement for the former Twitter).

Once the pilot is ready in November, we will be working to close a seed round of investment to fully develop this new pipeline for the web, iOS, and Android, so it is ready for everyone who remains committed to democracy, justice, and equality to use in the 2026 midterm election cycle.

The project will provide more monetary benefit and subscriber growth for authors and journalists, while allowing subscribers to freely communicate with each other.

The democracy feed will deliver curated news from trusted sources (with trust and bias ratings), meaningful civic action opportunities, and author/content discovery.

As an important part of the new media pipeline we are also working on “Civic Spaces” which is a moderated and invite-only virtual “room” in which participants with diverse perspectives on societal imperatives such as climate action, healthcare, wealth concentration, DEI, and gun violence prevention share their perspectives, develop new understandings, and seek agreement and solutions that can be codified into law and policy through civic action. Imagine a new social media platform intent on uniting people on shared values instead of dividing people to keep us distracted from the concentration of wealth and plundering of our planet by billionaires.

And That’s Not All…
A New Information Pipeline is Coming

Corporate Behavior

When Disney recently suspended Jimmy Kimmel there was a rapid, massive consumer reaction to corporate censorship. People canceled their Disney-owned media subscriptions (Disney +, Hulu, and ESPN), and vacations at Disney resorts.

There was a clear action by Disney, followed by a reaction by consumers and it was immediately reflected in Disney’s revenue and their stock value.

Often, corporate behavior, comprised of their Board of Directors, the executive team, and key investors are intentionally shrouded in darkness to avoid public scrutiny. In cases where a company must rely on public perception, it becomes vital to protect “The Brand”. When a significant portion of corporate earnings is derived from advertising revenue, a successful public campaign against a corporate bad actor can extend to advertisers. For example, Disney owns the ABC Network. ABC provides programming for local affiliates such as Nexstar and Sinclair. When Kimmel’s suspension was lifted, Nexstar and Sinclair decided to show other programs in their locally controlled ABC markets. A major portion of affiliate broadcasting revenue is from advertising. When a campaign to track Sinclair advertisers and put coordinated pressure on advertisers to cease spending because of Sinclair’s attack on free speech, Sinclair relented and began taking the Kimmel feed.

Side note —Insidious detail about FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a billion-dollar merger of ABC affiliates, Project 2025, and Trump are here: https://bomdia.substack.com/i/174336942/jimmy-kimmel-is-gone-sort-of

The campaigns against Disney and Sinclair are recent examples of people being informed of egregious corporate behavior and taking coordinated economic action.

We will soon be piloting a simple web portal that will allow you to search for a company and see a simple grade based upon a handful of initial factors. The carbon footprint (compared to others in its industry), executive pay ratios (an indicator of economic fairness), and its lobbying expenditures. We will also include Linked Trust (https://linkedtrust.us/about) attestations about a company.

In the future we have plans to build easy-to-use technology that will allow you to transform a product bar code into insight into a company on your mobile device. When we purchase products, what kind of corporate behavior do we support with our purchase? Are they anti-union? Do they embrace diversity? Are they working to undermine democracy through political lobbying? Are they paying their workers fairly? Are they polluting our land, air, and water?

At a later date we hope to provide additional information about companies that rely on advertising revenue and their advertisers -which is important leverage for coordinated consumer actions and campaigns.

When we have the information to connect our purchases to better companies, we create important economic incentives for companies to act as better societal partners instead of those who exploit, extract, and destroy workers, communities, and plunder natural resources for short-term profit.

Silver Bullet (Not)

Together these new pipelines will not automatically bend the long arc of the moral universe toward justice. I view these new pipelines as infrastructure intended to strengthen democracy and empower society as a counterbalance to the dangerous and extreme concentration of wealth (and thus power) of today.

We are also designing legal protections into the operating structure of Civic Works to prevent a future acquisition by any person or entity intending to subvert our mission.

The flow of vital independent news, journalism, and economic information are fundamental to any meaningful form of democracy.

These new independent pipelines are long overdue.

PS -My Articles and Subscriptions are always free.

If you find this article of value please do share with friends, associates, & others who have an interest in the content.

Please note that my articles and subscriptions are not paywalled. This stems from a guiding principle -that any meaningful democracy requires an informed, educated, and engaged society. It is also to honor the life of Aaron Swartz who held firmly to the belief that research and knowledge intended for the betterment of humanity should be freely shared. Also, when you subscribe, like, & share -it is good for my fragile ego.

Aside from writing, mentoring others and projects related to democracy, economics, and social innovation, I’m dedicated to Civic Works, a 501c3 non-profit organization building and managing technology that blends social networking and civic engagement. Our core effort is around civ.works: https://civ.works. It is intended as a subscriber-supported, ad-free social network that does not betray subscriber trust by selling or sharing data with marketers or sinister political operatives.

I’m incredibly grateful for all who contribute to the civ.works effort through our secure payment processor, Stripe -and all who help us gain visibility by sharing the project with journalists and others to move the effort forward.

Special appreciation for all who continue to recommend my rants and musings, restack articles that are found to be worthy, and share with friends and family. And the following are some special recommendations for stacks I value -

• Diane’s Blue Forum 👩‍💻
• The Dworkin Report
• The Status Kuo
• LA Progressive
• America’s Fractured Politics
• For Such a Time as This
• Polytricks
• The Great Progression
• Pete Buttigieg’s Substack
• James Vander Poel
• Ilene’s Substack
• Beverly Falls
• Martha Redsecker
• Heather Cox Richardson -Letters from an American (LFAA)
• Steady, Dan Rather