The “controversy” over Sydney Sweeney is absurd and largely fake, but there’s one thing worth paying attention to — the tried and tested formula used by the right-wing outrage machine to manufacture liberal fury and then bait the left into making it a reality. Here’s how it works:

First, invent the outrage. This usually involves picking a neutral or mildly provocative event and finding something about it to frame as being offensive to the left. In this case, the slogan (“Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”).

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.

I have reported on and studied some incredibly dark topics, but there’s a rabbit hole underneath the practice of AI resurrections (ie, trying to recreate dead people through AI personas) that makes QAnon look like a fun walk through the park. And no one is paying attention. The practice of creating AI personas to represent dead people — including using their likeness, image, voice, and words — is disturbing enough on its face, and of course very rarely involves consent. But it’s also totally unregulated. Because no one is paying attention.

You’ve probably heard by now that Jim Acosta interviewed an AI depiction of a dead school shooting victim on Monday. Beyond the uncanny valley stuff, there are actual harms associated with so-called griefbots — some researchers even warn of “digital hauntings” that prolong grief. Beyond the implications for individuals, there are also profound societal implications that are not being addressed, as tech companies push these disturbing creations out there with no policies to regulate them or deal with accompanying harms.

To follow up on my recent article about Trump’s covert manipulation of the algorithms that curate our reality, I published a 10-step guide for resisting the tyranny of the algorithm.

You have a lot of power here, but you have to learn to use it. This is the first piece of advice I offer in the survival guide for resisting algorithmic tyranny. Until you learn the difference between entertainment and education vs covert psychological manipulation, you will remain a slave to the algorithm.

Learn the difference. Act on it.

Just to put a fine point on it, remember that Trump dismantled our entire cybersecurity workforce so there’s no one around to stop his algorithmic manipulation — and those who are around and might consider doing know that their job is on the line if they do.
As a reminder, within 2 months of taking office, Trump had fired over half of the government’s AI workforce. The ones who were there to put up guardrails.

Link to the piece I wrote about this in March: weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/trump-is-set…

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.

Remember the Facebook Files from 2021 — internal research that was leaked, revealing that FB’s algorithm was designed to amplify divisive & emotionally charged content in order to maximize engagement? Well, those files also revealed the underpinnings of modern disinformation. Basically, much like FB’s algorithm, disinformation isn’t designed to inform or educate. It persuades through emotional appeals and tapping into the unconscious, not by making logical arguments or providing helpful facts. This is rooted in scientific research.

Claiming that vaccination is an issue of “personal choice” — as HHS Secretary Kennedy often does — disregards the fact that choosing not to get vaccinated strips *other* people of their personal *choice* to stay healthy or live a normal life.

My latest: open.substack.com/pub/weaponized… My then-9-month-old infant didn’t choose to be exposed to a vaccine preventable disease, nor did she have the choice to be vaccinated against it (because she was too young). Someone else made a choice not to get vaccinated, yet she was forced to pay for their costly decision.

There are a lot of reports about fire hydrants around the LA area lacking pressure and/or not having any water when firefighters went to use them, and I haven’t seen anyone raise the question of whether this could be the result of a deliberate attack on US infrastructure? Unsurprisingly, most people are blaming the political administration in CA and LA for failing to properly maintain the fire hydrants, which could be true. But it’s also the exact the narrative I would push if I wanted to deflect attention from a deliberate attack.

I love it when I’m running, & some angry old man beeps his horn & yells at me to look up b/c they think I don’t see their car, presumably b/c they didn’t see me until the last minute. Meanwhile I saw them coming 1/4 mile away & already memorized their make, model, & plate #. I’m capable of looking at my phone while running & paying attention to the road at the same time, it’s one of the skills that women have to learn to keep ourselves alive. We are never not paying attention to our surroundings b/c we know that angry men like you kill women like me.

Trump and Musk’s inevitable breakup is going to be the messiest divorce that any of us has ever seen, and it’s probably going to happen a lot sooner than you think.

newrepublic.com/post/188501/el… One of the unique & defining features of malignant narcissism is the use of self-destructive behaviors as a control mechanism. When a malignant narcissist fears they are losing control, they will often sabotage their own relationships, career, etc, just to maintain control.

Something that you have to understand about Russian interference is that it’s highly unlikely that they would actually try to manipulate votes or vote tallies. Why? Because they know they can achieve the same or even better outcomes by manipulating voters instead. 🧵 I wrote about this 5 years ago.

As I said then, changing the vote count in one election would yield limited returns. But convincing voters to doubt the legitimacy of election outcomes for the foreseeable future? That’s a return on investment.

bylinetimes.com/2019/07/26/rus…

If you’re genuinely surprised that Trump won, may I gently suggest that you reevaluate where you are getting your information from, and be honest with yourself about whether you are willing to listen to people who tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear. The information environment on the left is broken, too, just in different ways than on the right. Too many people choose who to follow and who to listen to based on who makes them feel good, not who tells them the truth. In fact, those who told the truth were often ostracized.

A viral claim emerged from pro-Trump Twitter on Friday, alleging that locals in NC had assaulted a FEMA director. By Saturday, it was a top Google trend. But it never actually happened.

Here’s how a fictional story ended in real threats of violence:
weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/how-a-viral-… There were a lot of striking aspects of this story, but more than anything, this was among the clearest examples I’ve seen of how online storytelling can be used to motivate and guide offline violence through the reframing of political violence as a necessary act of survival.

He did. Trump & his allies spent years weaponizing the narrative around antifa in order to preemptively justify using violence and force to crack down on anyone who opposed Trump — thus paving the way for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on 1/6.
👉🏼

https://x.com/rvawonk/status/1686502478970318849?s=46

https://twitter.com/zaleskiluke/status/1838122173195575330

This went on for YEARS; I was one of very few people talking about it for a long, long time. It was in the works since at least 2017 (likely earlier) and it involved politicians, media, think tanks, govt officials, & more.

They’ll try again if they can.

https://x.com/rvawonk/status/1145349621134299136?s=46

https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1145349621134299136

I wrote about cognitive warfare and how the contrived panic over Haitian immigrants hijacked our algorithms, our brains, and our national discourse.
weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/how-the-cont…
During the 2-hr-long presidential debate this week, abortion was the top political topic searched in 49 states. The only exception was Ohio, where immigration was the top-searched issue — a trend driven by searches for topics related to the false claims about Haitian immigrants.

This was always the inevitable endpoint of the wildly false claims about Haitian immigrants eating dogs & cats. As this person literally admits, it doesn’t matter to them if it’s factually true or not — it only matters that (to them) it *feels* like it *could* be true.





It’s REALLY easy to get people to spread absurd lies about immigrants (or anyone else) if those people already believe terrible things about immigrants *and* are politically/ideologically motivated to persuade others to believe terrible things about immigrants.

The CEO of Google — one of the five largest tech companies in existence today — says he has no solution for the company’s AI providing wildly inaccurate information to users.

Astonishing that they didn’t address this before releasing the AI publicly.
futurism.com/the-byte/ceo-g… We need a totally different incentive structure here. We shouldn’t celebrate companies for releasing things faster, or making the most dramatic changes to the status quo. Instead, we should reward those who prioritize rigorous safety testing & built-in guardrails.

This — IU changing a rule overnight & pretending they didn’t – is such a prescient example of why my biggest fear regarding AI is that it will be used to rewrite history and produce the “evidence trail” needed to make the fake version of history look more real than the real one.

https://twitter.com/iubloomington/status/1784218565140226344

I’ve spent a lot of time looking into this potentiality and it’s actually a lot easier to accomplish than it seems, which should absolutely terrify you. Of course, it would start small, with marginal changes to obscure events & records — so by the time you notice, it’s too late.

Look, I obviously know the circumstances are different, but there is a ton of overlap between what is going on now and the various iterations of the so-called campus free speech wars that we’ve seen for years. We know how this will unfold. Here’s a sneak preview. The stories you hear in the media will be the most extreme examples that can be found, and nearly all of them will be fundamentally misrepresented based on the biases of the person telling the story. This will fuel a cycle of escalation that few people on either side want.