Thread by @RVAwonk

I just published the 2nd major piece in my series about algorithmic tyranny — this time, revealing how Trump & the right-wing outrage machine are not just gaming algorithms, but rewriting the rules so they can keep gaming them indefinitely. I call it the Feedback Loop Coup.

Last week, I introduced the concept of Reverse Algorithmic Capture, a tactic used to force platforms to rewrite their rules through political & legal pressure. Feedback Loop Coups are similar, except they exploit *existing* rules to rewire algorithms & seize control of your feed.

We all know by now that platforms operate on the same fundamental principle: the more engagement a post receives, the more the algorithm pushes it into other people's feeds. The faster this engagement occurs, the more "urgent" the algorithm considers it, and the wider it spreads.

The problem with this is that the algorithms fueling these platforms can be weaponized — you can deliberately trigger an algorithm by manufacturing outrage so intense that it convinces the system that people actually care about a non-event and want to see more content about it.

A Feedback Loop Coup occurs when an outrage event is staged so precisely and amplified so aggressively that the algorithm has no choice but to promote it to the top of feeds — where people who never sought it out will inevitably encounter it.a

One of the clearest examples of this phenomenon was Stop the Steal.

When it became clear that Trump had lost the 2020 election, his digital team immediately pivoted to winning the narrative instead. In just 3 words (Stop the Steal), they conveyed the alleged crime & the verdict.

On November 4, a coordinated network of Trump loyalists began pushing this slogan across social media, launching a barrage of identical graphics, synchronized posts, and networked pages & groups covering all 50 states. The algorithms responded immediately.

Within hours, Stop the Steal was trending on Twitter. Facebook's recommendation systems funneled thousands of people into newly created groups. YouTube's suggestion engine served up election-fraud videos on autoplay. It played out exactly as they’d planned.

Then, when Facebook began shutting down "Stop the Steal" groups, this became a new outrage hook (“They're censoring us!"), triggering new waves of comments & shares. The algorithm didn’t see it as disinformation — it just saw high-velocity engagement, which it rewarded.

The Feedback Loop Coup had succeeded. A baseless claim about election theft rose from the fringes to the center of America's political conversation — propelled by the very algorithms designed to keep people "informed."

The left has tried similar campaigns, but they just don’t have anything like the right-wing outrage machine to amplify their content. Right-wing influencers also appear more willing to push false content rapidly in a coordinated manner — the ends justify the means, apparently.

And because right-wing messaging often portrays Big Tech as biased against conservatives, any moderation attempt can be reframed as censorship. This "censorship" content triggers its own engagement spike, extending the feedback loop into a self-perpetuating system.

If the Feedback Loop Coup is a precision strike, Reverse Algorithmic Capture is the siege that follows.

Here's how they reinforce each other:

When algorithms are hijacked this way, they stop reflecting reality and start reshaping it. The stories topping your feed aren't necessarily what most people care about — they're what was engineered to trigger the algorithm. This creates a dangerous distortion.

It also hijacks the news cycle. Journalists, trained to treat trending topics as newsworthy, end up covering manufactured controversies as if they were organic phenomena. Trump and his allies know this, and they’ve learned to exploit it to seize control of the media cycle.

The real danger here isn't just Trump and his allies’ ability to execute this strategy repeatedly at opportune times — it’s that they're playing the game in a way that permanently changes the rules for everyone else. It’s algorithmic tyranny.
open.substack.com/pub/weaponized…

Trump and his allies are waging narrative warfare against the American public, and they’ve figured out how to force social media platforms & media outlets to amplify their messaging. This is training algorithms to promote certain narrative structures — with lasting effects.

All of this is tipping the scales in favor of right-wing disinformation and creating a mechanism by which any attempts to moderate disinformation feed yet another outrage cycle. It is reshaping reality in real time.

In my next piece for this series, I’ll introduce you to the concept of Moderation Sabotage, which involves overwhelming the very people and systems meant to stop this type of manipulation. You can find this and more at weaponizedspaces.substack.com

This is the link to the piece I published today:

https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1954516262031171778