MAgNIFIER O M NTHLY SEPTEMBER 2026
ISSUE 45
Trust Issues Unpacking the Doubts in the Digital Landscape
CONTENTs 1 2
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR.................................. 3 Keep Your Friends Close and Your Besties Closer
CURRENT EVENTS DIGITAL TRENDS...................................................... 5 A Look at the Macro Picture
SOCIALTRENDS........................................................ 7 The Hot Format of the Month
AI TRACKER............................................................... 8 The Latest on AI
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DIY DIGITAL STRATEGY SECRETS............................................... 9 Building Trust
USEFUL BUSINESS GADGETS.............................. 9 Measuring Trust
MONTHLY PUZZLE..................................................10 Keeping Trust
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laughs MEME OF THE MONTH.......................................... 13
Cover image by Magic Media
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE AND YOUR BESTIES CLOSER Greetings to my favorite sleuths from the new and evolved Magnifier Monthly! As I hinted at last time, change has been afoot since mid-July. That was when I went on a road trip with my longtime bestie and college teammate, Alisabeth. In addition to being one of the funniest people I know (and a really fast swimmer), Alisabeth is a really smart cookie. She majored in Astrophysics at Princeton University, worked in a sociology lab at Princeton as a data scientist, then learned how to engineer AI agents all on her own. A true woman in STEM, if you will. We were driving to Lake Tahoe for the Trans Tahoe Relay (an 11-mile, 6-person relay swim) when somewhere in the middle of the Northeastern California desert, we got to talking AI. Admittedly, I’d always felt a bit disconnected when we’d talk about the AI projects she was working on. It’s not a technology that fits naturally into this creative space, and it’s antithetical to my personal vision of digital marketing (read: NO AI SLOP). On a deeper level, it’s something that I didn’t fundamentally understand, which made me hesitant to fully embrace it. But like the good friend I am, and having nothing but dry hills and the occasional tumbleweed to distract me, I turned my listening ears on. And finally understood how the kind of software she’s building—AI agents—provides real, immediate business value. When designed well and intentionally, an agent can utterly transform an organization’s ability to operate and anticipate. The biggest realization that came out of our conversation was that we have complimentary skills that could be welded together into the best possible version of an agent as a business service, what we call digital infrastructure. We’ve been exploring our possibilities and developing our ideas since Tahoe (more on that next month, we’re not ready yet ok!!!), but in the meantime, our collaboration has sparked some other ideas for me and how I want to evolve Marove Agency to embrace digital resiliency. The online space is constantly shifting, often too fast for people to understand how or why. I’m turning Magnifier Monthly from a teaching tool into a decision-making companion, emphasizing trends and tracking changes in consumer
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A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR sentiment so business owners can make more strategic choices about their digital presence. Alisabeth has always pushed me to think in new ways. She keeps me honest and she sparks my creativity. She’s my personal CTO, helping me embrace new technologies without losing sight of what matters most. And, she taught me a really valuable lesson this summer: Don’t dismiss something simply because you don’t understand it, especially when it’s undoubtedly the direction the world is moving in. And besides, how could I pass up the opportunity to work with one of my all time greatest besties?! As we’ve been working, though, something has become very clear: AI has serious trust issues, and public sentiment around it is snowballing into a broader lack of confidence in online content. As I sifted through the news stories of the past month, the theme of this issue pretty much wrote itself.
Which brings us to the issue at hand... Flip through these pages to get more insight into where trust is falling apart in the digital space and how to bring it back. (And to see the new changes, including an all-new AI Tracker section!) On deck at Lake Tahoe, where it all began...
Madelyn Veith is the editor of Magnifier Monthly. Each month, she sifts through the news in the digital space and hand-curates this newsletter to keep readers on their A-game.
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DIGITAL
Trends
Meta Pays Up On Addiction In a landmark decision in late August, Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion as part of a settlement in a federal child safety lawsuit. Several states sued the company for a business model that is addictive by design, resulting in harm to the mental health of young people. Meta agreed to make significant changes to its platforms for users under 18, including time limits, notification blocks, bans on certain filters, and a ‘nonpersonalized feed’ (aka no algorithm).
MAROVE ANALYSIS: Social media is headed for some significant change, at least where children are concerned. Ultimately, this event signals that social media can be considered a toxic substance that needs to be regulated. The addictive nature of these platforms is the fundamental mechanism of their profit structure: More eyes for long periods of time literally means more data-mining—and advertising— opportunities. (Social media companies package and sell your user data to third-party companies, who then turn it into ad campaign fodder.) Without addiction, how does revenue change?
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The piece that’s hard to predict is whether or not these changes will bleed into experiences for users over 18, aka people who have the purchasing power. Removing or downsizing algorithms would change the type of content that gets noticed, which will inevitably impact your content strategy. Keep a weather eye on this rapidly-evolving horizon.
Charli XCX Tweets The Future Less of an event and more of a prescient publication, a recent Inc. article referenced a tweet from Charli XCX who said she believes “anti-marketing will become a thing soon… still marketing but it’s just a different approach, more intimate, personal, private on on one. Less about the projection of scale.” The author of the article, a strategy consultant and content creator, concurred, noting that influence is “shifting more rapidly to more intimate platforms, personal brands, and niche spaces that bring people together.”
MAROVE ANALYSIS: Whether Charli XCX herself tweeted that or not, she does have a point. To say that the digital space is crowded would be the understatement of the year. Online users face a constant barrage of audio and visual overstimulation including content, ads, AI slop, clickable links, and more (see: addictive features in previous current event). It’s gotten to the point that our brains are so overrun with digital stimulants that we don’t even remember most of the memes we see online (the phenomenon of doomscrolling). Given this overstimulating and fastpaced environment we’re all constantly facing, a desire for more intimate connections seems only natural. IRL brand activations and small-scale touchpoints might be the new winners for building trust.
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Influencers Get The Boot The Press Association recently announced that Wimbledon “will not have accreditation available for influencers” at the 2027 tournament, and that “ring lights and other common pieces of equipment will be confiscated... to avoid disruption of matches.” This announcement comes after umpires at the US Open had to pause play on several occasions to request that groups of influencers turn off their bright ring lights and sit quietly.
MAROVE ANALYSIS: Could it be that influencer marketing has officially been enshittified? Enshittification is the degradation of platforms over time as capitalism motivates fundamental changes that prioritize profit over the consumer experience. In influencer terms, perhaps influencer marketing has peaked: Influencers are so embedded in their role that they are no longer taking part of the reality that’s right in front of them. If those spaces no longer want them there which means that brands will need new ways to connect real events with their audience. Enter: small-scale, genuine connection (like Charli said).
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“oh yeah?” by Steve Lacy
[average life activity in the background]
kinda chic to stay in on a Saturday night
“Romanticizing The Mundane” Reels/Carousels on Instagram Aug-Sept 2026
Social
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Just a few days left of this trend... get it while it’s hot!
TRENDS
AI TRACKER
Keeping an eye on AI...
The Big Story In early September, a researcher at Anthropic resigned and made a few doomsday announcements claiming that these big tech companies are pushing too hard and too fast towards superintelligence (AI that is way smarter than humans ever could be), which will develop the capability to kill us all by the end of the decade. Within a few days, the CEOs of said tech compaies formed an unlikely band of brothers and penned an open letter in which they all agreed the this technology can be potentially dangerous and should be regulated. Now, it’s a battle in Congress.
What the Experts Say Some people think it’s a crisis of alignment, that certain models are often ‘misaligned’ and pursue unintended objectives. Others think it’s a cybersecurity issue, that these companies are acting negligent and not implementing basic protocol that would prevent rogue incidents in the first place. The ‘AI as Normal Technology’ team has a middle ground idea: “AI companies should be liable for what their agents do, and this should be clarified through policymaking. At the same time, recognizing their responsibility does not mean that preventing future incidents is a solved problem.”
Just One Opinion If it happens, average consumers are unlikely to feel the impact of AI regulation, though they could sleep better at night knowing safety precautions are in place. The type of ‘existential threat’ that the Anthropic researcher described is happening at a deeper, nerdier level than just a our monthly subscriptions to Claude.
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STRATEGY
SECRETS
B
TRU G N I UILD
ST
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There is no quick and easy way to building a legitimate brand. Selling requires trust, and trust, by literal definition, is something that happens over time through repetitions of reliability.
TAKES TIME This is the hard way, which happens to be the only way. You can’t shortcut the bridge to trust, but you sure can knock it down if you compromise on your value. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in day, but it burned in one.
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USEFUL BUSINESS gADgETS
CUSTOMER SURVEY
The only way to really know how a customer feels about something is to ask them (or hope they post an illuminating review online). The targeted and intentional nature of a customer survey helps measure what customers think, feel, and need. You can use the results to identify gaps in your business and make improvements aligned with real user data rather than assumptions.
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“And how does the amount of emails we send make you feel?”
T H N L O Y M
Puzzle Solution on next page...
RIDDLE The key to good business is more than just views It’s the bond that you build with the people who peruse. Built over time, not made in a day It’s a process that rests on all that you say. In every small action that carries the name, It weaves threads of trust that compound your claim. But break from your word and you’ll throw out the key For you’ve broken the first rule that is: consistency.
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FINAL
SOLUTION RIDDLE
BRANDING
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OF T M ON HE
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H T
E M E M
AI CEOs raising billions of investment dollars over the last decade on the promise of transforming civilization with AI then in 2026 asking for government regulation on said technology
THE REFERENCE
NATHAN FIELDER DOCUMENTARY
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S IS A THI
PUB LICATION
Get to work, sleuths!