Other Concerns to be Aware of

Hopelessness with the Current State of the World

Things are getting scarier every day. The current political state, climate change, technofeudalism, AI, corporations, the list goes on. It's extremely easy to give in to the hopelessness of it all, but I implore you not to. Some things you can do are:

• Volunteer: Bonus points if it's something you're passionate about. I recommend looking into local community farming opportunities, as you can provide your community with free healthy food while helping the environment and normalizing the idea of community farms and gardens.
• Organize: Join local political, advocacy, community, support, hobby, and volunteer organizations.
• Educate yourself: Never stop learning. There's a famous quote that goes along the lines of "The day you stop learning is the day you stop growing" (ironically, it isn't clear who said it first). It is much easier to keep an uneducated masses under control than it is an educated one.
• Be envoirnmentally concious: It may seem impossible to have an impact on the environment when big business is polluting so much more than us common folk, but it's important to try (Riley, Thériault). Reduce, reuse, recycle, dispose of batteries properly, ecobrick, use public transport or walk/use a non-motorized mode of transit, etc.
• Donate: Donate to local and global efforts. Donate blood. Also consider donating to things you might take for granted, like the Internet Archive. Before donating to Wikipedia's parent organization Wikimedia, look into their finances.
• Divest: Don't support products, services, and corporations that wouldn't support you. Boycott companies like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Amazon. You can use services like BoyCat and No Thanks to determine what products to boycott.
• Educate others: Not just on the things in this guide or these other bullet points, but on the things you're knowledgeable about. If you're a med student, educate others on the dangers of pseudoscience like the anti-vax movement or horse medicine curing COVID-19. If you're into tech, make a guide for your friends on how to fight back against big tech (wink wink).
• Be a good person: Just generally. Be empathetic, be kind, be helpful, be ethical, be smart, be moral. Hopefully you're doing that already, though.
• Work on yourself: Fix things you don't like about yourself, whatever that may be. Become a more complete and well-rounded person. People are easier to control when they aren't competent. Exercise, educate, volunteer.
• Be active politically: Stay active on all levels of government. Vote, contact your representatives, stay educated, protest, etc.

ID Verification Laws

Recently, multiple states, countries, and companies have either introduced or have started working towards ID verification rules that would require you to provide your ID before being able to participate in the web. Mandatory ID verification laws are a massive threat as they enable censorship by governments over what you can and can't see, give governments and corporations the ability to track you across the web, basically remove online privacy as a possibility since everything you do online will be tied to your government identity, and increase your risk of identity theft as companies constantly suffer data breaches, leaks, and hacks (Roach). In the specific case of them restricting minors, this means minors can no longer communicate on a mass scale, express their thoughts and opinions about issues, have their voices heard, or participate in today's culture. They will mean the days of being private and secure on the internet will be over, as your internet activity and all the data people collect about us will be directly tied to your government ID.

Texas Senate Bill 2420 would’ve gone into effect January 1st, 2026, if it hadn't been federally blocked by a judge after Attorney General Ken Paxton was sued by Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (Nguyen and Simpson, Vasquez). This bill would've required app stores to require users to verify their IDs before downloading any app. Texas Republicans still want to make it law (Texas SB2420, Nguyen and Simpson).

Australia has already implemented a ban on social media for those under 16, banning everything from Instagram to even streaming like YouTube and Twitch. Other countries are following suit (McGuirk).

Discord recently had a leak of 70,000 ID photos (BBC). Just four months later, they decided to begin to roll out "Teen-by-Default" settings to all users unless you can prove your age with an ID, facial scan, or if their "age inference model" deems you to be an adult (Discord). One of the companies involved in Discord's age verification is linked to the surveillance company Palantir (Open Rights Group). You can use Discrub (Desktop only) to purge your Discord account activity.

The US Federal Government is eagerly attempting to pass age verification laws as well, with the proposed legislation undergoing many transformations and name changes along the way. Most recently, the KIDS Act has been introduced. On top of the standard criteria for an age verification bill, Section 234 says that people under the age of 13 will be unable to use messaging features (Congress). This could mean that if you choose to not verify your age on online platforms, your access to things like DMs could be revoked. It passed the comittee on May 5, 2026, meaning it is waiting for its day in the House (Roth).

This is all even scarier when combined with the fact that Google will soon ban installing apps from outside of Google Play on Android and will require app developers to verify their ID with Google in order to be able to develop apps on the platform (Google). This initially would’ve gone into effect with the new year, but after consumer backlash they pretended to walk back the change (Google). Despite claims that Android is going to be free going in to the future fueled by Google's misleading blog post, the change will go in to affect starting in September of 2026 (Keep Android Open). Not only is this a massive concern for user freedom and privacy, this would also mean it would be impossible to not support Google as a company (which is incredibly worrying considering their previously explored ethical failures). Check out Keep Android Open for more info and updates.

Stay aware of what's going on in the government and in the corporate hellscape and try to talk to your representatives to make sure these kinds of laws don't go into effect.

Memetic Warfare

- A stated purpose of the military memetics program (McBride)

Memetic warfare is the utilization of memes as propoganda in order to influence the masses, categorized as a form of psychological warfare, which is said to be a large part of the current political landscape. The United States is currently involved in "exploit[ing] the psychological vulnerabilities of hostile forces to create fear, confusion, and paralysis, thus undermining their morale and fighting spirit" (McBride). Know that nothing is sacred when it comes to your attention, even a thing that seems as innocent as memes.

Right to Repair

- Devin Hartline, senior fellow at a conservative think tank's Forum for Intellectual Property and anti-right to repair advocate (Congress)

The right to repair is the legal right for consumers to be able to repair and modify products that they purchased. Companies shouldn't have the right to tell you what you can and can't do with your own product that you paid for. It shouldn't be possible to leave a device you paid for unusable or make it difficult to repair your devices for no reason other than to make a profit when you pay them to repair it. For more information, check out the Consumer Rights Wiki, the FULU Foundation, and Louis Rossmann's channel.

Surveillance State

- Larry Ellison, founder and owner of the company Oracle - the partial owner of TikTok in the US, maintainer of the Java programming language, and owner of a large amount of all corporate infastructure - who is the 6th richest person, owner of an entire island of Hawai'i, father of the owner of Paramount Skydance - which will soon also own Warner Bros. Discovery - and friend of the Israeli Military, who offered a board seat in his company to Benjamin Netanyahu (Ma)

Flock Safety cameras are everywhere. They’re supposed to be used for law enforcement and ICE, but they are extremely insecure and publicly viewable with the right tools (Jordan). To see a map of known Flock cameras, check DeFlock. There are some near your home, and likely more on the way if you don't advocate against them and protest on the local level. Before the controversial 2026 Super Bowl commercial, Amazon's Ring doorbells also worked with Flock, culminating in an increasingly worrying and popular surveillance state (AP, Koebler).

Palantir is a company that's been in the news a lot lately, yet no one seems to know why. Maybe it's their insane stock prices, maybe it's their confusing business model, maybe it's that one of their CEOs Peter Thiel doesn't think the human race should continue on, maybe it's the other CEO Alex Karp that seems to always be high, or maybe it's them embracing the surveillance state with their very existence just to appease shareholders. Hard to say. Either way, know that you are almost never alone. Someone could always be watching, whether it be a corporation, government, or person and whether it be online or in real life.

Technofeudalism

Technofeudalism is the economic idea that technology companies occupy similar roles to that of feudal lords in the past. It may seem far-fetched, but in many ways we are already there (Varoufakis). It was championed in part by Yanis Varoufakis's book of the same name. Things like online commerece and social media platforms, Peter Thiel's rise to power, JD Vance's upbringing, the US's interest in taking over Greenland, the corporatization of international politics, AI, and the inaction of global governments on climate change make infinitely more sense when you consider the possibility of corporations replacing governments. Know that things don't get better when you get rid of one person, corporation, or government - it takes a large-scale effort to dismantle the evil systems in place. For summaries on the subject, I recommend this and this video by Epoch Philosophy or Varoufakis's own video summary of his book.