Thread by @RVAwonk

Today, I published what is probably my most important article in quite a long time. In this piece, I revealed how the Trump administration is covertly manipulating social media platforms & algorithms to boost the administration’s narrative and suppress opposing lines of thought.

Now, there’s no secret program or code that they’re using to do this. It’s being done through a process that I call reverse algorithmic capture.™

Instead of calling for censorship or bans directly, the Trump admin is reshaping the architecture of digital platforms in its favor.

By engineering incentives that guide algorithms to amplify preferred narratives and suppress dissent, they don’t have to issue any direct orders. They can stay at a seemingly safe distance, maintaining possible deniability, all the while pulling the strings of public algorithms.

This practice of reverse algorithmic capture has already been written into policy and is affecting the algorithms that shape everything from search results to feed curation to ad targeting, to content moderation on platforms.

It’s affecting you. Probably more than you realize.

These algorithms are essentially unseen curators of reality. They decide what content you see or don’t see; what creators you see or don’t see; what ads you get served; what your Google results look like when you search for anything from restaurants to personal health questions.

In a new EO, Trump codified this process of reverse algorithmic capture by forcing any company that wants to do business now or in the future with the federal government to implement standards to reduce “bias“ — which includes not mentioning things like diversity and equity.

That’s not even close to all of it. We have also seen companies like YouTube & Facebook respond to the Trump admin’s false claims of censorship by scrapping their own content moderation practices, which almost always benefits right wing media outlets & commentators.

Interestingly (to me at least), this set of tactics actually mirrors in some ways a Russian disinfo tactic called reflexive control. Though there are some key differences, what Trump is doing is basically forcing platform decisions by manipulating the choice architecture.

In the name of fighting censorship, the Trump administration is shaping digital ecosystems to favor its preferred narratives while chilling dissent. It is a form of soft epistemic authoritarianism—and we all (I hope) know what comes next.

We are witnessing the emergence of a privatized information infrastructure that serves public ideological aims without invoking the First Amendment—or admitting the state’s hand. It’s being done by rebranding algorithmic power as populist reform.

Hi, Bannon.

Let’s be clear: Reverse algorithmic capture isn’t a policy debate about platform bias. It’s a strategy designed & rolled out by the Trump admin to realign the rules of information visibility in favor of those in power, using regulatory levers to reprogram epistemic systems.

When governments can shape what you see w/out saying what they’ve done, democracy becomes a puppet show lit by a carefully engineered spotlight.

And if the algorithm is the gatekeeper now, then who holds the keys?

Fight back. Starting now. Starting here. weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/revealed-how…

In related news…

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1951295650097672411

Thank you for your support. Anything you can do is greatly appreciated — retweeting, signing up for a free sub, or committing to a paid membership..

Trump targeted my research for defunding, and I don’t know how much longer I can do it without funding. You guys are my lifeline.

Really, though, I can’t thank you enough for your support and encouragement. I want you to know that none of it is taken for granted, and I appreciate every single one of you and every single show of support. I always have and I always will.

Please don’t ask me to post links in my thread when literally the whole point of the thread is that I wrote an entire article about this topic and included links throughout the entire piece. But since I’m nice, here’s your summer reading list.

whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…

eff.org/deeplinks/2025…

youtu.be/jSKkfwyzQgw?si…

rsf.org/en/usa-trump-s…

pbs.org/newshour/amp/s…