Social Media

The three hosts are back at the end of the summer, and the news has piled up. Meta settled with forty-seven state attorneys general for up to $17 billion, and Austin walks through what the company actually conceded, why those concessions leave the core product intact, and how Meta turned its own loss into a strike at Snap, TikTok, and YouTube. Andrew noticed that Claude’s memory feature excludes religious beliefs, which leaves a secular default sitting underneath everything else it personalizes, and Joel explains what really happened when models “escaped the sandbox,” whether a VPN is worth paying for, and why an ordinary church is an easy target.

SEO is dead, so Andrew reframes the whole question: communication is how we love our neighbor, which means choosing the right medium. The hosts work through email, group texts, church apps like Planning Center, a Google Voice text ministry, and the new robots.txt era of search.

A major Meta lawsuit and what it signals for platforms, youth, and accountability.

Bonnie Kristian on AI chatbots, companionship, and what is real in a conversation with a machine.

Living faithfully as exiles in a digital Babylon, and what comes after the diagnosis.

Setting the tone: neither breathless nor fearful, how to talk about AI with wisdom.

What the gods of Silicon Valley believe, and how their faith shapes the tech they build.

Ian Harber on stewarding testimony and story online without turning the self into a brand.

Pastor Luke Simmons on making local, faithful digital content for a real congregation.

First in a series on church and tech: Chris Martin on marketing the gospel without manipulation.

Bluesky surges as users leave X. Is the new platform actually different, or just the next hype cycle?

Internet culture is not a subculture anymore. The hosts on how the online has become the air we all breathe.

Meta's Orion glasses point past AR to a deeper bet about mediated reality, and what motivates the company building it.

Section 230, algorithms, and regulation: the hosts unpack a shift that could remake how social platforms work.

A biographical conversation with co-host Austin Gravley on power, formation, and finding a voice inside digital Babylon.

Jay Y. Kim on how noise rewires our craving for silence, and why analog presence transforms where digital only informs.

What is a teen worth to a platform? A conversation on youth, Instagram, and how parents and pastors can respond.

Ian Harber joins to weigh AI companions, a fragmenting internet, and what is real when the feed is full of bots.

Samuel James argues the internet is not just a tool but a set of liturgies quietly forming what we desire.

Threads launches against Twitter, and the hosts ask whether yet another platform can be used without using us.

If our apps are engineered to hook us, what does freedom look like? A practical, pastoral conversation on habit loops, dopamine, and rest in God.

Chris Martin on the anxiety social media breeds, the gap between our front- and backstage selves, and how churches should show up online.

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra on a theology of play: when do games simply delight us, when do they disciple us, and how should parents think about both?

From Musk's Twitter to the arrival of ChatGPT, the hosts look back at the five tech stories that defined 2022, and why they still matter.

As Musk circles Twitter, the hosts read the platform's decontextualized speech against ancient wisdom about news, words, and the formation of attention.

Ruth Cuthbert on dating apps, singleness, and the hard work of treating a profile as a person rather than an option to swipe past.

Is authenticity overrated? Using BeReal as a test case, the hosts ask what 'be real' actually demands of us, and whether any app can deliver it.

Jason Thacker on forming wisdom instead of just following rules, and how our digital habits quietly disciple us in an age of misinformation.

If distraction is engineered, how do we push back? Five counter-practices for reclaiming attention in an economy built to fragment it.