While major tech platforms like Google increasingly favor AI-generated content and corporate publishers, independent voices like Digital Citizen face an unprecedented challenge. Our traffic has plummeted 40% since November 2023 – and a staggering 53% compared to November 2022. We’re not alone in this struggle; many independent publications have already shut their doors in 2024. Yet we don’t want to give up. We want to continue creating high-quality, free tech content, and we need your help to weather this storm. If our in-depth tutorials, honest reviews, or practical tech advice have ever made your digital life easier, here’s how you can help us:

Try Bing as a search engine, instead of Google

In 2024, Bing became the unexpected champion of independent publishers, delivering search results that highlight quality content from experienced editors and established publications like ours. The contrast with Google is striking: while searching for “How To” content, Bing prioritizes articles from knowledgeable publishers, while Google increasingly favors discussions from Reddit, Quora, and similar forums.

Try Bing instead of Google

Microsoft’s approach to artificial intelligence (AI) integration also sets Bing apart: the company has enhanced the search engine’s speed and accuracy with targeted small language models, and manages to regularly surface diverse content sources in the search results returned to their users. This ethical implementation stands in contrast to Google’s approach, which seems to gradually sideline independent publishers and promote sponsored content, forums, and large corporate publishers.

Keep in touch by subscribing to Digital Citizen!

The internet has changed a lot, and with the advancement of AI, people have a wide range of preferences for discovering and consuming content. That’s why we expanded our presence across more platforms, and we will continue doing so in 2025. It’s now easier than ever to stay updated with our latest tutorials, reviews, and tech advice – with even more options coming next year.

You can subscribe to Digital Citizen in more ways than ever!

• Email newsletter - if you regularly use email, this may be the best subscription option. Never miss a tutorial or review with our flexible email options. Choose between our daily newsletter for instant updates on new articles, or our weekly newsletter, which gets sent every Sunday and neatly packages the week’s content. Subscribing takes seconds – just use the form found on our Newsletter page and at the end of any article.
• RSS feed - our RSS feed lets you bypass algorithms and get our content directly in your favorite reader, like Feedly. It’s the most reliable way to never miss an article, while maintaining complete control over your content consumption.
• Google News - many people get their daily news from Google News. We’ve recently joined this platform and have a small following. We would greatly appreciate it if you could subscribe to Digital Citizen on Google News and help us grow our audience. Even if you don’t regularly use Google News, subscribing would send a strong signal to Google that we are a popular publication that readers enjoy. Thank you for your support!
• LinkedIn - while it may have a reputation for being a bit too buttoned-up, we’ve discovered a surprising side to it: we often discover insightful conversations on this social network and valuable content that you won’t find elsewhere. Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn prioritizes showing you updates from the pages you follow - like Digital Citizen on LinkedIn.
• Facebook - If you’re active there, follow Digital Citizen and let the algorithm know you want to see our posts: your likes and follows make a difference! While Facebook isn’t the best for consistent updates due to its algorithms favoring sponsored content, we’d love to have you as part of our community.
• WhatsApp - if you’re an avid WhatsApp user, join our channel: Digital Citizen on WhatsApp. You’ll get access to our content shortly after it’s published on our website, and you can react to share how you feel about each individual article. We recently launched this channel and would love your help reaching over 100 followers by the end of the year. 🙂
• Instagram - we suck at Instagram and we’re still figuring out how to use this platform to share and promote our content. Our account might not be polished right now, but if you’d like to support us as we figure it out, we’d truly appreciate it. Follow Digital Citizen on Instagram and help us grow.

These are the channels that you can use to stay in touch with our content. If you have any ideas on which other channels we should hop on, please let us know in a comment. We’re open to all your suggestions, no matter how unusual they may be.🙂

Share our content

We’re putting a lot of effort into creating high-quality, in-depth content. Each article is written by a real person and reviewed by two others to ensure accuracy. Unlike other publications, we don’t rely on AI to generate articles - we’re committed to providing technically accurate and complete content that genuinely helps people. If you’re curious about how we work, you can find more details in our Ethics statement.

That being said, if you enjoy and find our content useful, we’d greatly appreciate your support in sharing it. Whether it’s posting on your favorite social network, sending it via WhatsApp to someone who could benefit from it, or emailing it to a friend or family member who needs your help troubleshooting their Windows problems - every share makes a difference. Thank you!

What would you like us to do better?

We’ve asked quite a bit from you, and we hope that’s okay. Honestly, we’re grateful that you keep reading what we create and that you’ve chosen to subscribe. It’s a great help to us - not just financially, but emotionally too. Knowing that people like you value our content keeps us going.

Before we wrap this up, I would love to hear your thoughts. What do you enjoy about our site and our content? What do you think we could do better? Is there anything specific you’d like to see from us in 2025? Drop a comment below and let us know - we’re all eyes and ears.