Practicing in the Paradox
When the Algorithm Flags Life
Yesterday, I posted a video on LinkedIn about a tension so many of us feel: using extractive platforms while building regenerative movements. These places harvest our attention, flatten nuance, and nudge us toward performance instead of presence.
Then I stumbled upon a post from chef and food storyteller Matthew Beaudin. He had shared a photo of real food - just mushrooms, a deer's hoof - the honest story of where nourishment actually comes from. LinkedIn flagged it as "violent."
Real food is too sensitive for LinkedIn!
Of course the irony wasn't lost on me.. I was using the very platform I was critiquing! But what happened next made me realize this contradiction might be the point.
Because the machine can't recognize life.
It only recognizes engagement.
In my comment back to Matthew, I wrote:
"The algorithm wants us docile and disconnected. Every time you post a deer's hoof or an urchin gonad, you're practicing resistance. Every real story disrupts the extraction machine."
Matthew replied with something that hit me deep in my bones:
"The machine hates that because truth is messy, inconvenient, impossible to quantify… Keep telling the story that smells like rain and rotting leaves and the ocean."
He's right.
Truth is inconvenient.
And life is not optimized for ‘conversions’.
These exchanges remind me why I started this Covenant series in the first place, with a story of Matthew on stage with the great Alice Waters. (The covenant asks whether we will keep participating in systems designed for extraction or start rebuilding the world so life can thrive.) Last week, we brought that question to our plates, because food is where the planetary story becomes intimate. Every bite we take is a choice about what and who we regenerate.
This moment with Matthew extends that lens beyond what we consume to how we communicate. The platform itself becomes part of the covenant. We are not only making choices about what we eat. We are making choices about how we show up, how we connect, and ultimately how we practice a planet-positive future inside systems that weren't built for it.
So the tension returns, sharper than before:
Walk away from extractive spaces entirely?
Or inhabit them differently so regeneration has a chance to take root?
That second path is how new futures begin. Not later. Not when everything is aligned. Right here, right now, inside our imperfect systems, through imperfect actions.
Every time we refuse to sanitize reality for the algorithm, every time we choose meaning over metrics and treat each other like kin rather than content - that is regeneration in practice.
Messy. Inconvenient. Impossible to quantify.
Which is exactly why it works.
There is a covenant in all of this. A choice to stay, with integrity. To show up as citizens rather than users. To make these digital places feel less like machines and more like ecosystems again.
This is the work.
One post at a time.
One interaction at a time.
One small act of resistance at a time.
I'm building the Regenerative Innovation Community because practicing together is the only way transformation ever becomes real. When we change how we behave, even here, we change the kinds of worlds that become possible.
If you are trying to rebuild from within, in your business or industry or community, you are already part of this movement.
You do not have to be perfect.
You just have to keep practicing.
Let's regenerate how we show up.
Let's regenerate the systems we stand inside.
It starts with presence.
And presence starts in the choices we make right now.