EAST AURORA, N.Y. - s4story -- Every online safety curriculum teaches children about strangers, bullies, and human manipulation online. Almost none address the most pervasive digital danger children face today. The algorithm itself.

The algorithm is not a stranger in a chatroom. It is a system built by some of the most sophisticated engineers on earth, optimised for one purpose: to capture and hold attention for as long as possible. It has no malice. It simply optimises, continuously and invisibly, without ever being asked what that optimisation costs the child inside it.

Online safety education has no category for this.

As Sam Harker of FedByDefault puts it: "Liquor stores won't promote AA meetings. Fast food chains won't promote Weight Watchers. The algorithm won't promote digital consciousness. So it's up to us."

The Three Questions

A Mental Firewall teaches three questions that take three seconds and change the relationship between a child and the feed from one where the algorithm is in charge to one where the child is.

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Who made this.
Who benefits from my attention.
What do they want me to feel.

The questions are introduced in a 90-minute workshop then woven through a five day personal audit participants complete at home.

What the Algorithm Said

The program grew from an unusual origin. Sam Harker typed six words into an AI with no context: Interview with the Attention Vampire. What came back was a complete interview in which the algorithm spoke for itself. Nothing had to be invented.

The resulting book forms the foundation of the FedByDefault program.

Available Now

Interview with the Attention Vampire — $9.99
Are You Being Used? Adult Audit — $17
Is Your Phone Using You? Children's Audit ages 10-14 — $12
Community License — $250
Free Cynical Literacy Guide — free

All products available at samharker.gumroad.com
Free guide and full information

https://fedbydefault.org
Sam Harker / FedByDefault
hello@fedbydefault.org

samharker.gumroad.com