this is the second post in the series this month on how AI is collapsing the algorithmic influencer economy and creating a clear path to cognitive sovereignty.
to read the first issue, start here:
issue 1: why attention is an asset
this week examines how a time from the 1700s mirrors where we are now.
picture the summer of 1782 in Paris, France.
the Parisans are drowning in printed paper. the industrial printing press had just dismantled the Church's information monopoly. pamphlets were circulating faster than the monarchy could track or censor them.
and among the flood was a printer named Louis-Sébastien Mercier, who watched the old patronage system collapse in real time.
he saw writers who spent their entire careers relying on sponsorships suddenly finding themselves competing with anonymous, rapidly printed broadsheets that reached the streets directly. the gatekeepers lost their monopoly on distribution.
but while he saw this happen, Mercier didn't panic or throw in the towel.
he didn't try to optimize his pamphlets for the old aristocratic approval system.
he didn't double down on the patronage relationships that were evaporating.
he saw that the medium itself shifted, and the only people who would survive were the ones who owned the relationship with their readers directly.
so he started writing shorter essays designed for direct public circulation and from there, he built a readership that didn't require aristocratic validation to sustain him. he survived the transition by accepting what was actually happening instead of mourning what was ending.
Mercier's story in his era mirrors the structures we're seeing right now.
the Church's information monopoly was replaced by the printing press. the printing press gave way to mass media. mass media gave way to social platforms. and social platforms are now being dismantled by the same force Mercier faced: a technology that collapsed the cost of production so thoroughly that the old gatekeepers can no longer control who gets heard.
in this time period, the technology we know of is AI. the gatekeepers we know of are platforms like twitter, instagram, tiktok. the algorithmic systems decide who gets seen and who doesn't.
most creators don't want to hear this, but it needs to be said: the algorithm was never your audience. the algorithm is your landlord, and as we know, landlords can raise the rent at any time.
you've built your presence on rented grounds. these platforms gave you a stage, metrics to follow, and the illusion that your follower count was an asset you owned, but it's not, and it never will be.
the data's already there, too. the median creator earnings declined slightly, from $3,500 to $3,000, even as platform averages rose [1]. AI is flooding the zone with surface-level content, collapsing the market for output where it's transactional, and the platforms are quietly shifting their payout models to accommodate the machines they're building.
this is a business model correction, and everyone's going through this, not just you. in this specific case, we're in right now, the exposure window is open. you probably have heard this phrase before, but it doesn't mean what people think it means. it doesn't mean you need to post more often or try to go viral. it means the system is actively auditing whether what you've built has actual substance or just performed well under the pressure the algorithm brings with it.
visibility without ownership is just free labor, if we're being honest. you've worked for free on behalf of platforms that sell your audience's attention to advertisers and keep the difference. this arrangement worked when output provided by humans was scarce, but it doesn't work when AI can produce thousands of posts in the time it takes you to write one.
the algorithm isn't your enemy here; it has an expiration date. it's a signal telling you that the arrangement you've been operating under isn't viable anymore. you need to build something that doesn't depend on its continued generosity.
so where do you go from here? i'll tell you exactly what you need to do.
build an owned infrastructure.
this could be an email list, a direct payment system, or a community space where the algorithm doesn't sit between you and the people you actually serve. you need to start routing your content towards a destination you control, not just a platform that controls you.
and no, please don't wait until things are perfect to do this. do it now while you still have an audience to route. fifty followers with a direct email list is worth more than fifty thousand followers on a platform that can change its rules tomorrow. this is creator economy math in 2026.
the way Mercier survived the 1780s media collapse was by accepting that the container had broken and value migrated to the relationship that didn't depend on the container.
i strongly urge you to pay attention because the same shift is happening now. the platforms need to be seen as funnels, not foundations. build on ground that you own and stop renting your presence from a corporation that sees your creative output as training data for its next product launch.
the exposure window isn't going to be open forever.
but the infrastructure you build while it's open will outlast the transit entirely, so get to work on building today.
xo,
shidoni ✦
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