Invisible Rulers

By 2015, we were already entering a world in which truth was determined by popularity, viral nonsense trended daily, and partisan polarization was actively exacerbated by armies of trolls, foreign and domestic.

the current system is simply an attention- and revenue-maximization engine built by a for-profit company;

today’s social media ecosystem affords the influencer-algorithm-crowd trinity another method for shaping public opinion: harassment. Harassment campaigns have also evolved as a result of the collision between the propaganda machine and the rumor mill; as we have discussed, mobs may target a random Main Character of the day or may focus instead on a

Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer reported that 67 percent of respondents changed their lifestyle in the last six months because of an influencer they followed,

alongside this (d)evolution in media came a unique offshoot in the evolutionary tree: individuals who used the same social media tools and strategies as the proliferating new-media entrepreneurs but positioned themselves quite deliberately as ordinary people.

This tension, together with the lack of a clear bright line around what should be allowed, is often exploited by precisely the people who benefit most from no moderation, like the Propagandists and the Perpetually Aggrieved.

State-sponsored disinformation and propaganda campaigns today don’t need to reach a large audience or persuade entire societies—or even majorities of people—to think a certain way. In a world of splintered publics, such campaigns can target and activate specific factions.

Policies shape propagation; the rules lay out what may be hosted, monetized, and made to go viral. But there are differences in opinion about what should be permitted, and enforcement is rarely uniform.

Within each niche, the influencer-algorithm-crowd trinity shapes consensus and defines the beliefs of their public.