In recent years, consumers around the world have sent a clear, collective message: They are tired of burdensome recommendation algorithms on social media platforms, and they want out.
The desire to be free from siloed, infinitely scrolling feeds led to the development of a depersonalized TikTok feed that went live in Europe. That idea proved so popular that American TikTokers asked to try it out, too. Meanwhile, decentralized feeds like Bluesky are trending up thanks to the algorithmic choice they offer, and entrepreneurs like Patreon’s Jack Conte are working on redesigned, better-for-you recommendation systems.
To meet the demands of creators and fans who feel trapped in their endless feeds, Adam Ayers and Victoria de la Fuente have unveiled Doomscrollr. That’s the name of a new platform that facilitates direct, unfiltered communications between creators and their followers — without any of those pesky algorithms getting in the way.
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Each of Doomscrollr’s creator partners receives their own personalized homepage, where their social media posts, digital storefronts, Substack essays, and other updates are synthesized within a single feed. The order of posts is purely chronological. As Doomscrollr’s homepage explains, the platform is designed to take the “corporate chokehold” out of social media.
Ayers, the former CTO of Yeezy, and de la Fuente, a luxury brand executive, envisioned Doomscrollr to fill a gap in their own social media feeds. With her motherhood brand Zillion Trillion, de la Fuente achieved a six-digit following, but that audience was fractured across multiple feeds. Doomscrollr looks to knit those streams together.
“Any traffic source has the potential to fuel your growth engine when it drives people toward properties you own and actually control,” de la Fuente told Tubefilter. “Doomscrollr is designed to be one of those owned properties, not just another profile competing inside an algorithm.”
Ayers and de la Fuente have spent the past year building Doomscrollr’s community from the ground up. After attracting an investor base that includes WeTransfer Founder Nalden and former Accenture Senior Managing Director John Del Santo, the husband-and-wife duo have invited a diverse group of creators to check out their startup.
One success story has been fashion designer Christopher John Rogers, who has used his Doomscrollr account to build an email community that includes more than 150,000 subscribers. Shortly after Doomscrollr launched its freemium model, de la Fuente reported that more than 5,000 new users had signed up.
“Instead of optimizing for infinite consumption, the platform is designed around ownership, intention, and sustainability,” de la Fuente told Tubefilter. “It is built for creators who want control over their audience, their distribution, and their outcomes.”
Emboldening creators is nice, but that sentiment means little without enough revenue streams to back it up, and by eschewing algorithmic feeds, Doomscrollr is moving away from the most common form of monetization on major social hubs. As you might expect, Ayers and de la Fuente have a solution in mind.
“We built Doomscrollr around a flexible freemium and paid pricing model, not advertising,” Ayers said. “Creators can get started for free and upgrade as their business grows, based on the features and ROI that matter most to them.” He added that the company will “actively help creators grow and retain their audiences” when they sign up for paid plans.
AI is in the mix, too, though Ayers stressed that it will “work quietly in the background.” A creator-controlled AI camera, for example, is one tool Doomscrollr users can employ to create gated, exclusive experiences.
That setup is meant to resemble the early days of the internet, before jumbled social feeds complicated topics like ownership and distribution. When Ayers and de la Fuente talk about their creator partners, they use words like “pioneers” and “trailblazers” that harken back to the days when the internet was thought of as a modern-day Wild West.
“The potential of that period was not technological, it was human,” Ayers said. “We are carrying that spirit forward with modern, cutting-edge tools, while staying true to the soul of independent creation.”
That’s quite the daunting mission, especially as the algorithmically-driven feeds become more efficient and calculated. But Doomscrollr’s founders are excited to tackle the project in front of them. “This is only the beginning,” Ayers said. “We are releasing new features designed to help creators get discovered and grow faster, including viral mechanics that do not require gaming algorithms or paying for ads. Our goal is to make growth feel earned, natural, repeatable, and aligned with creator ownership.”
