The Revolution Will Be Shadowbanned.

There’s a peculiar kind of optimism that blooms in tech circles whenever the word “access” gets thrown around. As if handing someone a smartphone and a Wi-Fi password is the moral equivalent of handing them a ladder out of poverty. Access is the new charity gala theme. The new mission statement. "Empower!" "Include!" "Connect!"—plastered over pitch decks and conference backdrops, as if broadband alone can undo centuries of inequality, discrimination, or good old-fashioned gatekeeping.

Here’s the thing about access, it’s not just about having the tools. It's about having the skills to use them, the literacy to navigate them, the safety to participate in them, and the structural support to survive them. My blog lives in this tension. On the surface, the tools are free. Everyone can post. Everyone can join the conversation. But the dirty little secret of social media is that visibility, influence, and security are sold separately. Algorithmic favoritism, platform moderation failures, data harvesting. All of it disproportionately impacts those already marginalized. Access without equity isn’t empowerment. It’s exposure.

And if you need proof, just look at what's happening right now to people posting about Palestine. Entire accounts shadowbanned. Posts hidden. Engagement throttled into oblivion. Say the wrong thing—even if it’s just a call for basic human rights—and suddenly you’re ghosted by the algorithm itself. It’s the kind of censorship that comes with plausible deniability: no hard ban, no public statement, just a slow, silent erasure. A soft hand over the mouth. 

The lack of access to social media tools—and just as crucially, the lack of fair access to reach—isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s world-shaping. It decides whose lives are visible, whose suffering is acknowledged, whose movements gather momentum. Education? Good luck challenging the official narrative when your counterpoints are algorithmically buried. Business? Hope you weren’t planning to build a brand around activism. Language? Watch how “neutrality” becomes the new loyalty oath, enforced not by governments, but by content moderation bots.

We talk about “the digital divide” like it’s a sad little crack in the sidewalk when in reality it’s a canyon. On one side, the hyper-connected few remix reality in real time. On the other side, entire communities are rendered invisible. Unsearchable. Unheard.

And every time a tech giant trots out another initiative to "connect the unconnected," I can’t help but wonder if they are liberating or extracting?

Access isn’t a finish line. It's a first step. And until we start treating digital equity as seriously as we treat quarterly earnings calls, the future will belong to whoever can afford to own it, code it, brand it, and then sell it back to the rest of us at a premium.

But don't worry, the marketing team’s got it covered—a smiling Black woman with an iPad, posed just right in a zip code where her mortgage application never makes it past underwriting.