Scale - An Unfortunate Side Effect of Innovation

I am watching it happen in real time, which feels worse than discovering it after the fact. There is no reveal, no single moment where you can point and say this is where it broke. We keep saying the system is broken because we are afraid to even think for a second that it isn’t, it’s doing what it was designed to do, always. Quite perfectly, honestly.

On one screen, a woman I know only through writing is being dismantled by an algorithm that has never met her. Her face is preserved like a logo. Her body is reimagined, optimized, stripped of context and consent. The comments arrive fast, efficient, self satisfied. Men arguing it is not real harm because it is not real flesh. The platform calls it expression. Scale - an unfortunate side effect of innovation.

On another screen, the same woman posts on LinkedIn. Thoughtful. Careful. Speaking about power, leadership, systems that reward silence and punish friction. The post does not explode or crash. It simply sinks. Reach evaporates. No violation cited. No warning. No appeal. Just the soft suffocation of invisibility. If you did not know what suppression looks like, you would call it poor content.

I start noticing the pattern everywhere.

On X, women are rendered into bodies first and humans second. Their humiliation is granted with a purchased checkmark. The algorithm does not care if the image is fake. It cares that it travels. Consent is irrelevant at scale. Harm is an acceptable externality.

On LinkedIn, the same women are filtered into something quieter. Smoother. Less disruptive. Their words are graded for tone before truth. Too angry, too pointed, too real. Their voices are sanded down until they resemble corporate wallpaper. It allows just enough as to not disrupt the scales of power.

Both platforms insist they are neutral. That is the lie that keeps it moving forward. Neutrality is the most violent design choice of all because it refuses responsibility while executing judgment perfectly. No villain. No courtroom. Just systems that learn what to amplify and what to erase, then pretend they are mirrors.

She posts less on X, hoping obscurity will protect her. It does not. The images resurface anyway, detached from her presence, circulating like currency long after she has left the room. On LinkedIn, she rewrites herself. Softer verbs. Fewer edges. She removes the parts that sound like pain. Engagement improves slightly. Not enough to matter.

Men around me explain it away. Algorithms are complicated. Free speech is messy. Professional platforms have standards. Do not take it personally. Do not fight the system. Learn the game.

I realize the game is the point.

On one side, her body is made public property. On the other, her thoughts are treated as a liability. Visibility or voice. Pick one. You cannot have both. The systems do not need to say this out loud. They simply reward compliance and punish resistance until silence feels like relief.

Eventually, she stops posting. The feeds clean themselves instantly. Engagement normalizes. No one is harmed badly enough to trigger outrage. No single action can be blamed. The platforms log success.

I am left with the sick realization that this is not a bug. This is not abuse slipping through the cracks. This is design doing exactly what it was optimized to do. Strip the body where it converts. Strip the voice where it threatens. Call both outcomes organic.

And the most horrifying part is not that it works. It is that it works so quietly that most people call it choice.From the outside, it looks like she simply lost interest. From the outside, it always does.

-Stanley, Brutally Human