The tools are built for pros or for 15-second clips. The platforms are built for addiction and ad revenue. The people with something more to say get buried.
Video is the defining medium of the decade. Video and video platforms increasingly shape how we see the world, form opinions, and connect with each other.
But sharing your story through video is still way too hard. The tools are either built for professionals with complex editing timelines, or designed for 15-second clips. The platforms are built for addiction, data extraction, and ad revenue. And the people with something real to say get buried under content designed to keep you scrolling.
More and more people are starting to realize the relationship they have with these platforms is broken. They are addictive, extractive, and toxic.
The people with something real to say get buried under content designed to keep you scrolling. And although we still find it hard to change our behavior, that realization isn't fading. If anything, it's growing.
We need better alternatives, and for the first time the incumbents are vulnerable. People are ready to move. The best product wins.
TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and X don't just host your content. They dictate the length, the pace, the thumbnail, and the publishing cadence. They decide who sees your work, and they keep the audience.
In March 2026, BBC journalists published an investigation based on testimonies from more than a dozen whistleblowers inside Meta and TikTok. The reporting revealed that financial incentives drove decisions about what billions of people see every day. Safety was subordinated to growth, and the algorithms were black boxes even to their own engineers.
A Meta engineer told the BBC he was instructed by senior management to allow more "borderline" content "because the stock price is down." Instagram Reels launched in 2020 without sufficient safeguards. Internal research showed it had 75% higher rates of bullying and harassment, 19% higher hate speech, and 7% higher violence than the rest of Instagram. Safety teams were refused headcount while 700 staff were hired to grow Reels.
TikTok's own machine-learning engineers told the BBC they have "no control of the deep-learning algorithm in itself." The system radicalizing teenagers is not fully understood by the people who built it.
None of this is surprising, but it's part of a pattern. Shareholder interests over user safety, growth at the expense of responsibility. And it's getting worse.
Safety was subordinated to growth. The algorithms were black boxes even to their own engineers.
AI-generated content is flooding every feed. Human voices are getting buried, and people are scrolling more while connecting less.
Meanwhile, the fastest growing format in media is video podcasts, and YouTube is now the biggest podcast platform on earth. Not Spotify, not Apple. YouTube. The same playbook: the audience doesn't belong to you.
But something else is happening too. People are leaving. Not dramatically yet, not all at once, but the direction is clear.
Bluesky gained a million users in a single week after the 2024 US election and grew to 43 million within a year, closing a $100 million Series B in February 2025. Substack crossed five million paid subscriptions. Podcast audiences keep growing.
The pattern: people are choosing smaller, more intentional, more direct relationships with the people they enjoy following.
Every platform reflects the people who build it. Every day, the people shaping these platforms make thousands of product decisions: what gets recommended, what gets hidden, which tools to build, which investors to partner with, how moderation works. Those decisions shape the community and the conversation.
Elon Musk chose to reinstate banned accounts, turn X into a political megaphone, and deploy AI with zero guardrails. Fake nudes, AI bots amplifying outrage, and no moderation at scale.
Mark Zuckerberg chose to kill news on Facebook, fight regulation designed to protect children, and flood Instagram with AI-generated content that competes with the people who built his platform.
Substack chose to host content most platforms won't touch, while hiding behind a simplistic take on freedom of speech.
In each case, the priorities of the people running the platform became the product. And their blind spots became everyone's problem.
Every platform reflects the people who build it, and their priorities become the product. Their blind spots become everyone's problem.
That's not an argument against platforms. It's an argument for building one with intention.
When the biggest platforms in the world lose the trust of their users, there's an opportunity to build something better. That's what Subwave is.
This episode is part of a series of videos about what we're building at Subwave and Detail. I'm sharing a selection of posts on my personal channel. Subscribe to follow along, or send me a message to get access to the complete pitch.
