Last week, I wrote about Donald Trump’s Horror show. But in light of last week’s developments, it’s clear that the discussion about him and everything that he embodies is relentless. As if nobody could resist the urge to confront his figure.
The popularity of such a character on the web, though, is not an accident but an algorithmic inevitability. If it thrives online is because it found a system where it can. Yet the Internet doesn’t just shape public sentiment or opinion—it reveals it.
Fascism is etched into history, yet there are always those eager to rewrite the past, hoping that if they erase enough, we’ll stop recognizing it in the present. We did it before: against colonialism and white supremacism, civil disobedience is key. But does boycott really work? In a world where communities are more digital than ever, and in the face of the rampant hate speech online: how can we collectively build a movement that is both effective and sustainable?
In this article, I dive into the landscape of community resistance and collective organization in an era where uncomfortable conversations are more needed than ever, inviting you to imagine more reliable, enduring and sustainable alternatives to strengthen our communities –on and off-line–.
Trumpist speech coverage: a double-edged sword
As journalists, we do have a crucial responsibility to cover significant events, and it is clear that the public has strong opinions, which they are free to share online (more or less) to participate in the public debate. However, it is as well fundamental to discuss the way in which we engage with the fascist discourse.
“Is it ok to share online and to analyze every single gesture, word –or, even outfit–, of fascist and totalitarian characters?”–asks queer communicator @estupendamarquez online.
Media's relentless coverage of Trump’s administration presents a paradox: while it fulfills the democratic duty of informing the public, it also risks promoting his speech. Extensive reporting on the ultra right is needed in order to understand it and be able to fight back. Nevertheless, with repetition comes mastery.
Along with the challenge in countering these narratives, lies the risk of amplifying them; efforts to debunk or refute extremist content can inadvertently increase its visibility and further entrench harmful ideologies. This underscores the need for strategic approaches that mitigate the spread of hate without unintentionally promoting it and, likewise, do it in an organized and efficient way.
Social media was never your friend
Online platforms promised connection, but delivered hyper-fragmentation and misinformation. And as the far-right with its hate speech spread worldwide, targeted communities—queer, migrant, BIPOC, and others—must secure a resilient strategy to survive.
The more you scroll, the more they profit. Social media giants like Meta or X build their business models around one simple goal: keeping users online for as long as possible to maximize ad revenue. But holding attention isn’t just about offering more content—it’s about offering content that escalates. “The best way they have found to do so is not by simply showing the same content, but even more extreme versions of it,” warns Dr. Lewys Brace, an expert on online extremism. This relentless pursuit of engagement means that the longer users stay, the deeper they are pulled into a cycle where each post is designed to be more provocative than the last.
“Hate speech discourses have increased at least a 50% since Elon Musk bought social media ‘X’”, states a new study from the University of California, Berkeley. But it’s not ‘X’ alone. Last October, the newspaper The Sun published a report where they stated to have found “Nazi speeches turned into ‘sounds’ on TikTok and used in at least 72,534 posts”. Amongst them, “one post with over 59,000 likes featuring a Hitler speech set to music” –which was removed from the web after the journal published the note online.
Research shows that social groups with opposing political views interact less and less online, retreating into the so-called echo chambers—spaces where users are exposed only to content that mirrors their beliefs while dissenting perspectives are systematically filtered out. So what does it take to resist a system that is built to keep us scrolling, caged and outraged?
Does Boycott Really Work?
The way to protest against these companies is to strike them where it hurts the most: on their pockets. Ppeople know it. But it is not such an easy task. Whilst for some, ditching out Meta or X platforms it is about a political statement and data protection, for others, it’s about finding a space where relationships can continue to be built and community strengthened.
After Meta’s latest policy shift –where it discontinued its third-party fact-checking program. Instead, opted for a "Community Notes" system, reminiscent of the approach used by Musk's platform, X–, some did decide to break free. But not as many as it seems.
New data from multiple analytics firms reveals a shocking turn of events in the social media landscape. After a brief dip in user engagement following recent policy changes, Meta seems to have staged a major comeback, the Business Insider found. What triggered this unexpected surge? The looming threat of a TikTok ban.
According to Apptopia data, Meta’s daily active users, which had been declining by 2% year-over-year throughout most of January 2025, took a sharp upward turn starting on January 18. As Tiktok became available for U.S. users again and speculation rose around it, users flocked back to Zuckerberg’s platforms.
The story repeated with ‘X’ when Musk bought the company and it happened again after Trump’s victory. According to the Economic India Times, over 115,000 U.S. citizens left X last october. However, his profit from the social media platform kept growing. It seems like these platforms have created something we see less and less often off-screens: huge communities with shared interests, ideas and worldviews. Thousands of users around the world worked for years to profit from their growth online. Let’s face it: the majority would rather eat or pay rent than to close their account in order to make a political statement. So what’s the solution?
How to werk social media
Abandoning the platform entirely without a strategy leaves the conversation and your community behind. Don’t just leave, guide your community: where will they be able to find you? Outrage-driven activism often leads to burnout, performative gestures, and reactionary cycles, diminishing its effectiveness. Focusing on systemic change, rather than reacting to provocations, addresses root causes and leads to enduring progress.
Historical movements demonstrate that coalition-building and sustained organizing are more effective strategies. Create spaces that can’t be taken away. Strengthen your off-line community and organize. Social media is temporary. Build something yours, create systems that reflect your values, write books, document. Own your platform and have agency over your voice: algorithms can censor your content / work, and your community can’t be taken away by policy shifts.
Being able to verify information on the Internet, as well as to recognize what and what not to share online, is an exercise that is becoming more difficult as consumers, but it is crucial to strengthen our communities and be able to protect human rights and democratic values.
According to Stanford University, there are three questions everybody should ask themselves to avoid falling into the trap of misinformation: (1) who is behind that information? (2) On what evidence is it supported? (3) What do other sources say about the matter?
Media literacy experts widely recommend a strategic technique to verify information called Lateral Reading. It basically consists of checking multiple sources before accepting something as true. Instead of reading a single article or website in-depth (vertical reading), lateral reading involves opening new tabs, searching for the author, checking other sources, and evaluating credibility.Resisting the temptation of cliquing into the first search result online and, instead, navigating the web to find known or official sources is another recommendation.
Avoid sharing unverified information. There are plenty fact checkers available for free online, where information can be contrasted. However, the best tool is common sense and awareness of own’s biases.
Remember that rest is political
Whilst staying well-informed is a must, evidence shows that our digitalenvironment can foster reactionary rather than constructive action, which affect directly on our mental health, and highlights the need for a more balanced approach to media consumption and public discourse.
Our wellbeing, our sense of time, our ability to disconnect—these are all casualties of a system designed to keep us scrolling, producing. We resist, we organize, we migrate—but at what point do we step back? Capitalism thrives on engagement, on the relentless demand for our time, our outrage, our constant participation.
If we want to build sustainable communities, we must also learn how to rest. How do we reclaim solitude without surrendering the fight? Can we log off without losing the battle for digital justice? And most critically, what does it mean to rest in a world that turns even self-care into another marketable trend?
These are the questions we will confront later—because in the end, reclaiming our own time might be the most radical act of all.
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