Citizen Kane Today: Would Charles Foster Kane Own Your News Feed?

Citizen Kane in the Algorithm Age: When One Man Controls the Feed

The Man Who Could Buy Your Attention but Never Your Love

A modern Kane could shape the platforms that distribute news, turn personal grievances into political campaigns and mistake an audience’s attention for the affection he cannot command.

Charles Foster Kane would have little patience with waiting for his posts to go viral. A man accustomed to buying newspapers, recruiting their best staff and making his own convictions into front-page campaigns would probably want a more dependable arrangement. He would want to own the platform.

That is the most convincing answer to what Citizen Kane might look like today. His empire could include a social network, a video service and the systems that recommend other people’s journalism. His influence would reach beyond the words his employees published. It would extend to the conditions under which everybody else was heard.

Yet that technological advantage would leave his central problem untouched. Kane wants recognition he can trust, but repeatedly uses power to obtain it. The more control he exercises over the response, the less he can know whether anyone would have chosen him freely.

The Fortune Arrives Before the Freedom

Kane begins with an advantage that complicates every later claim to independence. His wealth comes through a mining fortune, while his childhood is redirected by adults who decide where he will live and who will raise him. Financial security arrives alongside separation from his mother.

A modern version should preserve that uncomfortable beginning. Making Kane a penniless programmer who builds everything alone would change the moral structure of the story. He has extraordinary resources before he has developed the maturity to use them. His later rebellion occurs within a life protected by money.

That does not make every conviction fraudulent. A wealthy person can recognise injustice. But Kane’s position allows him to confuse taking a risk with experiencing its consequences. He can fund an experiment, absorb losses and announce another crusade without facing the insecurity of the people whose champion he claims to be.

His platform might therefore begin as an acquisition rather than an invention. A struggling service would give him something that a profitable but unglamorous investment could not: a public relationship with millions of strangers.

The appeal would be partly political and partly personal. Running the service would let him describe what ordinary people supposedly need while keeping himself at the centre of the answer. He could oppose established elites from a position few ordinary users could ever occupy.

This matters because Kane does not merely want to be rich. He wants his wealth to mean that he deserves to be followed. The business becomes a way of asking for that verdict, while making it difficult for anyone close to him to answer honestly.

His Declaration of Principles Would Become a Product Launch

Early in the film, Kane gives his newspaper a declaration of principles. It promises honest reporting and a defence of readers’ rights. His friend Jedediah Leland keeps the document, giving those words a life beyond the excitement of their announcement.

Imagine the equivalent pinned to the top of a new platform. Kane promises to return public conversation to its users. He presents the acquisition as a public service and describes himself as the person willing to confront interests that others fear.

Those are hypothetical promises, not dialogue from the film. Their dramatic value would lie in their plausibility. People might have good reasons to welcome them. Existing institutions can be unresponsive, commercial incentives can distort coverage, and users can reasonably want greater control over what they see.

The story would become more interesting if Kane initially delivered something useful. Perhaps he made the service easier to navigate or gave overlooked writers a larger audience. Genuine improvements would help explain why intelligent employees and grateful users defended him later.

The test would come when his principles imposed a cost on him personally. Would a critical investigation receive the same treatment as a flattering profile? Could an employee explain a decision he disliked without risking dismissal? Would the promised rules survive his embarrassment?

A declaration can establish a standard against which power is judged. Kane would prefer it to establish his character once and for all. The distinction becomes visible when someone tries to hold him to it.

Leland’s role is therefore essential. He remembers that an appealing promise is also an obligation.

The Front Page Would Become a Different Feed for Everyone

A newspaper proprietor can influence which stories receive attention, how they are framed and which voices appear credible. A platform adds another layer. It can organise material produced by people who have never worked for its owner.

The same investigation can be prominent in one person’s feed and absent from another’s. A user may encounter a headline, a hostile reaction to it or a short clip detached from its wider explanation. Distribution becomes part of the meaning.

There is a factual basis for this comparison. In its published explanation of Facebook and Instagram ranking, Meta describes systems that combine predictions about what users may value, including whether they might share a post. It also describes feedback and controls intended to influence recommendations. That establishes a mechanism for personalised selection, not proof that an owner dictates every result.

For a fictional Kane, the attraction would be considerable. He would no longer need to persuade everyone to read the same front page. His company could participate in selecting the sequence of impressions through which different audiences encountered the world.

This would not give him perfect control. People have existing beliefs, use competing services and talk outside the platform. Employees, business partners and technical limitations would also complicate his wishes. A ranking system is not a remote control for human opinion.

But absolute control is an unnecessarily high threshold. Making certain arguments easier to encounter, and others harder to find, could still matter. The useful question would be who could inspect those decisions and challenge them when the owner’s interests were involved.

Kane would be especially dangerous if he confused the existence of user choice with the absence of company influence. People can choose what to read while the service still shapes the menu placed before them.

The Audience Would Help Build His Empire

The original Kane needs writers, editors and readers. A platform-owning Kane would also rely on users to supply much of what made his property valuable.

In this imagined business, people would upload jokes, personal accounts, investigations and arguments. They would build relationships that encouraged them to return. Their work would give other users a reason to visit, while Kane’s company controlled important parts of the surrounding commercial arrangement.

That changes the meaning of ownership. He could describe the service as a community because real communities existed there. Yet the affection between users would not necessarily imply affection for him. A person might resent his conduct and still stay because their customers, friends or professional contacts remained.

Kane would be tempted to count continued participation as endorsement. His advisers could show him growing activity while avoiding the more awkward question of why people were there.

An argument about him might also generate engagement. Supporters could defend him, opponents could mock him and spectators could return to watch the dispute. A busy platform would not tell him whether he was respected, feared, useful or simply difficult to ignore.

This creates a distinctive modern trap. The instrument he uses to measure success would record reactions more easily than it could explain their emotional meaning. His favourite number could rise while the quality of his relationships fell.

The gap between visibility and identity also runs through a modern Patrick Bateman surrounded by AI and Instagram. Kane’s version adds institutional power: he would help set the conditions under which those visible signs were produced.

Political Ambition Would Turn Users into an Imagined Constituency

In the film, Kane runs for governor. His political campaign extends the role he has already claimed as a defender of ordinary people, but it also subjects him to a verdict that ownership cannot settle.

A contemporary Kane might reach the same point through his platform. Daily contact with an audience could encourage him to believe he already possessed a democratic mandate. Supportive comments would appear to confirm that the public wanted him to intervene more directly.

The error would be to treat that audience as a representative electorate. Some users might be too young to vote. Others might live elsewhere, follow him critically or pay attention without agreeing. Even enthusiastic supporters of a business owner need not want that person governing them.

For the drama, these distinctions would be frustrating obstacles to his preferred story about himself. He would have spent years seeing evidence that he mattered. An election would ask a different question: should he be entrusted with public authority under rules he did not own?

His employees would face a new conflict too. Decisions about his campaign coverage could affect both a political contest and their employer’s ambitions. A routine argument about prominence might become a test of personal loyalty.

The film’s campaign collapses after his relationship with Susan Alexander is exposed. A modern adaptation should not assume that an identical revelation would produce an identical electoral result. Reactions to scandal depend on circumstances, competing information and what supporters already believe.

The enduring issue is his response to a limit. Does Kane accept that others may judge him differently, or treat their refusal as evidence that the process itself must be defective?

Leland Would Ask Who Can Audit the Owner

Leland is more than the friend who becomes disappointed. He represents a form of loyalty that Kane increasingly finds intolerable: loyalty to what their enterprise was meant to do.

In a platform company, Leland could be an editor, a senior researcher or a colleague responsible for standards. The precise job title matters less than his ability to distinguish criticism of Kane from hostility towards the organisation.

Imagine him asking for an independent review of how the service handles its owner’s political posts. He would not need to accuse Kane of secretly controlling every recommendation. The conflict of interest would itself justify scrutiny.

Kane could respond by pointing to examples of criticism that remained visible. He might offer a public demonstration of openness. Yet the important issue would be whether scrutiny continued when it became inconvenient and whether its conclusions could be published without his permission.

The original film gives this conflict a revealing complication. Kane finishes Leland’s negative review of Susan’s singing, then fires him. He can perform an act of apparent fairness while destroying the relationship that makes independent judgement possible.

The modern equivalent would be an owner releasing one uncomfortable finding while removing the person who insisted on investigating it. Outsiders might argue about the published result and miss the lasting institutional change.

Once dissent carries a personal penalty, colleagues learn to anticipate what the owner wants. Formal rules need not change immediately. Meetings become less candid. Difficult questions arrive later or disappear from the agenda.

Kane might experience that silence as renewed confidence in his leadership. The organisation would have become worse at telling him when he was wrong.

Susan Would Become a Brand She Never Chose

Susan Alexander’s story makes the cost of Kane’s ambition painfully concrete. He pushes her towards an operatic career she does not want to sustain, treating her public success as something his determination should be able to secure.

In a contemporary version, Susan might sing online, make videos or simply enjoy a private interest. Kane could offer a production team, advertising and privileged access to his platform. At first, the offer might look like extraordinary generosity.

The problem would emerge when help became a decision about her future. A modest pleasure would acquire targets, expectations and an audience. Declining further opportunities would become difficult because so much had already been spent on her behalf.

Kane would tell himself that he was protecting her from unfair criticism. But he would also be protecting his own judgement. If the public did not admire her, someone would have to explain why his resources had failed to produce the intended result.

A persuasive adaptation would allow Susan to be ordinary without presenting that as a defect. She would not need secret genius, flawless composure or a perfect public response to deserve control over her own life.

Nor should the story imply that more exposure is always a gift. Attention can impose demands that the person receiving it never accepted. Having an audience is different from wanting the work required to keep one.

The connection with Dorian Gray’s confusion of beauty, performance and human worth is useful here. In each story, admiration fails when another person stops fulfilling the role assigned to them. Kane’s money gives that failure a staff, a schedule and a public campaign.

Artificial Intelligence Would Make It Easier to Avoid Listening

Adding artificial intelligence to this imagined empire should do more than update its equipment. The technology would matter where it gave Kane a more efficient way to pursue an existing desire.

Consider a fictional assistant that summarised reactions to Susan’s latest performance. It could group criticism, identify favourable comments and draft suggested responses. Those functions might help a considerate manager understand a difficult situation. Kane could use them to avoid asking Susan whether she wanted to continue.

Another system might prepare different versions of his political message for different audiences. A third could assemble a flattering account of his achievements from selected company records. These are possible elements of the adaptation, not claims about a particular deployed product.

The dramatic question would concern the instructions and evidence behind each output. If advisers selected only reassuring material, a polished summary could make their omissions less obvious. A fluent answer would give an incomplete account the appearance of coherence.

Kane would remain responsible for what he requested and accepted. Blaming a machine for his decisions would weaken the character. His defining habit is to use available power to resist unwelcome reality; software would offer another means of doing that.

There would also be a quiet irony in his dependence on generated communication. He could send attentive messages at enormous scale while becoming less able to conduct one difficult conversation without managing the outcome.

The distinction would become clearest at home. A system might suggest exactly what to say after an argument. It could not perform the act of accepting Susan’s answer if that answer disappointed him.

Xanadu Would Be Connected to Everyone and Welcoming to No One

Kane’s immense estate gives his isolation a physical form. The possessions and rooms demonstrate how much he can acquire while making ordinary companionship seem increasingly distant.

A contemporary Xanadu could be full of devices that kept him continuously informed. Screens would show audience figures, security feeds, market information and reactions to his latest remarks. Everything important to the business would appear close at hand.

That convenience would make the absence of intimacy harder to excuse. He would be able to reach someone almost instantly, yet still struggle to create the conditions in which another person could speak freely.

An employee summoned late at night would know that answering was part of the job. A guest surrounded by staff might hesitate to disagree. A partner receiving another extravagant gift might recognise the argument that would follow if gratitude did not arrive in the expected form.

The house could therefore become an efficient system for obtaining responses that told Kane very little. People would be present because they were paid, invited under unequal conditions or exhausted by the consequences of refusing him.

Susan’s departure breaks that arrangement. Her decision cannot be made harmless by describing it favourably to an audience. Even if Kane persuaded strangers that he had behaved well, she would still be gone.

For a modern adaptation, this would be the moment to turn away from the feed. A successful public statement could appear on his phone while the room remained empty. The two facts would coexist, and the first would offer no practical remedy for the second.

The Film’s Structure Would Challenge the Search for a Definitive Profile

Citizen Kane does not give its protagonist sole authority over his biography. After his death, a reporter investigates Rosebud through records and the recollections of people who knew him. Their accounts reveal different relationships with the same man.

That structure would become especially useful in a digital version. The investigator could have access to interviews, posts, recordings and company announcements. There might be far more evidence than in the original story, without a corresponding increase in certainty about motive.

A public post would show what Kane chose to say. An internal message might reveal what he wanted colleagues to do. Neither would automatically establish what Susan experienced or why Leland stayed as long as he did.

The challenge would be to distinguish evidence from interpretation without pretending interpretation could be eliminated. Two people can describe the same conversation differently because they occupied different positions within it. The person with authority may remember an invitation where the employee remembers an instruction.

Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland give those relationships visual weight. In the childhood sequence, the boy remains visible outside while adults arrange his future indoors. A modern director could preserve that arrangement instead of replacing every dramatic idea with a shot of a phone.

The composition matters because it makes power visible before the child can understand it. Technology is unnecessary to that insight. The digital adaptation would be strongest when new tools clarified the old relationships rather than distracting from them.

Rosebud Would Still Be Something the Dashboard Could Not Explain

The final revelation is that Rosebud is the name on Kane’s childhood sled. It is destroyed among possessions being cleared from Xanadu, while the investigation fails to uncover its significance.

The object suggests a connection to the life interrupted when he was taken away. It gives the audience access to a private association that his public achievements cannot explain. It does not provide a complete diagnosis or absolve him of what he later does to others.

A modern adaptation could preserve the sled. There is no requirement to replace an old object simply because the surrounding business has changed. A person who owns advanced technology can still attach meaning to something that predates it.

Keeping Rosebud would also resist an easy ending in which an investigator finally obtains the missing file and solves the man. The audience would learn something important without acquiring a formula that reduced every decision to childhood loss.

For Kane, this is the boundary that ownership keeps failing to cross. A possession can survive while the experience attached to it remains irrecoverable. He could pay for a reconstruction of the house, a perfect photograph or a convincing simulation of snow. None would return him to the moment before the adults decided his future.

His later choices make that loss more destructive because he tries to secure other people against their freedom to leave. Understanding the wound should sharpen the tragedy, not soften the judgement of its consequences.

The final image of a digital Citizen Kane would not need a failed company or a deserted platform. His services could still be busy. People could continue posting, arguing and making money inside an empire that outlived him.

Somewhere away from those screens, a worker would pick up an old sled. Nothing in its price or condition would explain why it mattered. It would go into the fire before anyone thought to ask.

Sources

• American Film Institute — Citizen Kane — Film credits, production context and the plot connecting Kane’s fortune, newspaper, political campaign and relationships.

• British Film Institute, Leigh Singer — 20 Inspired Visual Moments in Citizen Kane — The childhood composition, visual storytelling and the film’s investigation of Kane’s life.

• Meta — How AI Influences What You See on Facebook and Instagram — The company’s June 2023 explanation of ranking predictions, recommendations and user controls; a technical comparison, not evidence for the fictional owner’s conduct.

Next Reads

• American Psycho Today: Patrick Bateman in the Age of AI and Instagram — Another modern reimagining examines digital status and a public identity maintained through technology.

• The Picture of Dorian Gray Explained: Beauty, Reputation and the Cost of Looking Perfect — Wilde’s novel offers a related account of reputation, possession and failures of responsibility.

• Patrick Bateman Character Analysis: Why American Psycho’s Monster Still Feels So Modern — A closer examination of the difference between an impressive public surface and a coherent private identity.