Running a small business online used to be a predictable process. Growth was treated like a math problem: follow the formula, post on schedule, stay consistent, and the results would come.

Not anymore. The rules are gone. And the game has changed.

We are living in a political climate where our rights and freedoms are under direct attack. The U.S. government has begun openly directing tech companies to surveil, censor, and punish accounts that dissent… particularly those labeled “antifa” or critical of the current regime. Social platforms seem to now function as surveillance machines: selling our data, manipulating our feeds with constant propaganda, and quietly silencing creators, voices and accounts that don’t align with the current political powers.

And yet, small business owners, micro-brands, and creatives are still being encouraged to “just follow the rules” by marketing gurus and small business influencers. Keep posting consistently. Chase current trends. Play nice with the algorithm. Pretend the landscape hasn’t changed.

But the landscape has changed. The rules we were taught don’t just fail us now, they bind us to the very systems dismantling our freedoms and rights.

I recently started reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. In it, the main character Lauren Olamina carries a radical truth: “God is Change.” She survives not by denying the collapse happening around her, but by adapting to it… by creating a new belief system, Earthseed, that recognizes change as the only constant.

That line has never felt more urgent. We, too, are living through collapse and transformation. Rights once assumed secure are under attack. The very platforms we built our businesses on are being weaponized into tools of surveillance and propaganda. The strategies we were told to trust belong to a reality that no longer exists.

Like the character in this book, we too cannot cling to outdated formulas and expect to survive. The only way forward is to evolve with change: to weave new ways of connecting, creating, and sustaining our work that are resilient enough to endure the instability of this moment.

The Roadmap of Rules That No Longer Apply

The old rules of marketing and digital business growth aren’t just outdated, they’re now becoming dangerous. Every time we blindly follow them, we pay into the very machine that’s stripping away our autonomy, silencing us, and reducing creativity to algorithmic rubbish. What once passed as “best practice” now functions as compliance training for surveillance capitalism.

It’s time to break with those habits. Below are six rules you’re probably all too familiar with… and why they no longer apply. More importantly, here are the shifts we must make if we want our businesses, our voices, and our creativity to not only survive, but remain free.

1. The Rule of Practicing Neutrality

The old playbook: Keep business “professional.” Don’t get (too) political. Stay neutral, quiet, and opinionless to protect your sales and reputation.
Why this is no longer a viable move: In a climate where dissent is criminalized and neutrality is rewarded only when it protects the status quo, silence becomes complicity. It doesn’t just keep you “out of trouble”… it actively upholds systems of harm by erasing voices and actions that could build solidarity and change.
Business is political because business is relational. Every exchange of money, labor, service, and story is woven into a wider social fabric. What you choose to say, or not say, signals to your community whether or not you are a safe space to connect with, support, or collaborate with. Pretending that business can remain apolitical ignores reality: our livelihoods, our platforms, and our visibility are all shaped by political forces.
The shift: Claim your values and your stand on human rights, environmental justice, and collective well-being openly. Not as performative branding or virtue signaling, but as a rooted commitment to our shared survival. Speaking up may feel scary or risky, but resilience is built when people know where you stand. Now is the time to put skin in the game, even if you don’t feel “personally impacted.” Taking a stand draws in those who need to find you and builds trust that can’t be manufactured through slick marketing alone.
If you don’t stand for something, the chances of falling for harmful narratives and tactics are high. Resisting neutrality doesn’t mean you have to shout about every political headline; it means weaving your values into your presence, your offerings, and your connections in ways that advocate for the world you want to live in.
This could look like:
- Making clear in your copy and policies that you stand against discrimination, inequities, racism, fascism, white supremacy… you name it. For me, this is a non-negotiable. Before collaborating with anyone, I look for whether they’ve made their stances visible, because my safety, and the safety of those I care about, depends on it.
- Using your platform to highlight voices, resources, or movements aligned with your values. Sharing content (with credit) or resources that reflect your politics and principles is a simple but powerful way to signal where you stand.
- Choosing partnerships, collaborations, and sponsorships that reflect integrity over profit. Yes, this can mean leaving money on the table. But this is the time to put your money where your mouth is. Refuse to partner with those who do not have the collective or planet’s best interest in mind. Boycott companies and organizations that are actively stripping away our rights and freedoms. We’ve already seen how effective collective refusal can be.
- Naming the social and ecological values that shape your products or services. This goes beyond selling for the sake of sales. It roots your work in meaning and purpose that stretches past capitalism and commodity.
These choices are not just about “politics.” They’re about building businesses people can trust as safe spaces in a time when safety, belonging, and freedom are under attack.

2. The Rule of Depending on Rented Land

The old playbook: Build your business entirely on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Dance for the algorithm daily. Follow the herd. Growth will come…so they told us.
Why this no longer works: These platforms are not just “rented land.” They are surveillance machines. They sell our data, censor dissent, shadowban truth-speakers, and punish accounts deemed inconvenient to the regime. Every post becomes another brick in the empire of surveillance capitalism.
We have to be honest about how damaging social media has been for us as a collective. These platforms control us. They’ve gotten us addicted. They’ve rewired the ways we connect, build community (or fail to), speak to one another, debate, and even how we think and act. We have already surrendered so much of ourselves to these spaces…often without realizing the extent of what we’ve sacrificed.
It’s time to take our power back.
The shift: Divest your dependence on Big Tech. Reclaim your sovereignty. Build ecosystems you actually own… email lists, websites, offline networks, community spaces. Anchor your work in places that can’t be shadowbanned or deleted overnight. This is creative liberation: refusing to remain at the mercy of platforms that profit from control.

3. The Rule of Chasing Attention

The old playbook: Capture as much attention as possible by whatever means necessary. More eyes + more clicks = more growth.
Why this no longer works: Attention has become the most valuable currency in propaganda economics. Every scroll, like, and comment is mined for power. Businesses that fight for “engagement at any cost” end up reinforcing the very systems that exploit us.
Those formulas, tactics, and hacks that big-name marketing influencers keep preaching? Not only do they often no longer work, but they also ignore the reality we are living in. The one-size-fits-all templates, the “go viral” formulas, the obsession with metrics… all of it keeps us trapped in a system designed to strip away autonomy and creativity.
Worse, capitalism is already co-opting the language of resistance. Marketing “gurus” and influencer-style businesses are now selling themselves as “sustainable” or “ethical” while their practices remain extractive, manipulative, and unsustainable as ever. It’s snake oil rebranded for the algorithmic age. And if we aren’t careful, we get pulled right back into feeding the machine we’re trying to escape.
The shift: Treat attention as sacred. Create marketing approaches that honor people’s focus, humanity, and current realities instead of exploiting them. Publish more slowly and thoughtfully. Invite a true opt-in connection. Protect your community’s capacity to think, feel, and act freely.
And perhaps most importantly: stop measuring success by how much attention you can grab, and start measuring it by the quality of trust and impact you cultivate. In a system addicted to distraction, businesses that respect attention, and resist turning people into metrics, are the ones building something real, lasting, and liberatory.

4. The Rule of Following The Herd

The old playbook: Hop on trending audios, keywords, headlines, and aesthetics. Visibility comes from playing the game and fitting in. If you follow what’s “hot,” you’ll stay relevant.
Why this is outdated: Trends are no longer organic culture. They are engineered distraction loops designed to keep us spinning, producing, and consuming without pause. What looks like culture is often nothing more than algorithmic bait. Chasing these cycles doesn’t just waste energy… it turns small businesses into free labor for Big Tech and unpaid distributors of propaganda.
When we build our businesses on this type of mimicry, we dilute our creative expression… something that we are trying to resist! We wind up trading originality for how the regime wants you to be visible. We begin to mistake sameness for safety and virality for value. That’s not culture, it’s compliance.
The shift: Create authentic, original signals. Share art, stories, experiences, and ideas that carry weight beyond a fleeting trend. Root your work in values, vision, and voice…not virality. This doesn’t mean rejecting playfulness or creativity; it means refusing to let your imagination be colonized by algorithms.
True relevance is not built on fitting in, it’s built on resonance. And resonance lasts long after the trend cycle has moved on.

What We Can Do Instead: Building Beyond the Machine

If the old rules tether us to systems of control, then the new way forward has to root us in sovereignty, adaptability, and creativity. Survival, growth, and thriving will belong to those willing to evolve.

Here are some pathways we can begin shifting:

1. Build Sovereign Ecosystems
Start simple: an email list that isn’t at the mercy of an algorithm. A website that lives beyond a platform’s policy changes. A Substack, a local newsletter, or even a physical zine. Sovereignty doesn’t mean isolation… it means building a center of gravity that can’t be erased by a shadowban or deactivated account.

2. Create Parallel Narratives
Art, story, and community narratives are more powerful than retweets of outrage. Ask: What story do I want to plant in the collective imagination? What vision of possibility can I offer that disrupts despair?

3. Prioritize Depth Over Volume
Imagine if your marketing output matched the pace of your own nervous system. Imagine creating at a rhythm that leaves you nourished, not depleted. Depth invites longevity.

4. Nurture Local and Off-Platform Roots
Host small gatherings, partner with local makers, circulate zines at coffee shops, and collaborate with nearby organizations. These connections can’t be censored or shadowbanned. They build resilience that outlives any platform.

5. Center Creative Liberation
Ask yourself: Does this marketing action bring me closer to creative sovereignty, or does it bind me tighter to the machine? Creative liberation is not just about what we make… it’s about refusing to let our imaginations be colonized by algorithms.

A Call-In to Reimagine

Marketing, branding, and business are not fixed scripts; they are living practices. Practices that must evolve with the world, or else risk becoming tools of our own containment.

The old rules were designed for stability in systems that thrived on extraction and compliance. But stability is gone. We are in flux… and that is where possibility lives.

We are not powerless. In fact, this is the moment where small businesses and creatives can lead, not by replicating the machine, but by imagining alternatives. By protecting attention. By building sovereign ecosystems. By creating art and storytelling that carry us forward instead of feeding propaganda loops.

This is about more than marketing strategy. It’s about survival, resistance, and the freedom to create and connect on our own terms.

The question is no longer: How do I grow my business as others have done before me?

The question now is: How do I grow a business that can adapt, endure, and liberate in the face of change?

And if God is Change, then our work is not just to survive it, but to shape it… into something more liberatory, more human, and more alive.

Until next time…

Natalie Brite - DoGoodBiz

Rethinking business in the age of surveillance capitalism