The Feed is Fake! Now What?!
a new series on feed manipulation and what the heck we can do about it
This is the first post in the “Feed is Fake! Now what?!” series where I explore feed manipulation and what we can do about it, inspired by Eliza McLamb’s article, Fake Fans and the subsequent nacho reheat via the Vulture article by Lane Brown.
The Feed is Fake! Now What?!
People in power are paying algorithm manipulators to influence our tastes, culture, and belief systems. Industry experts and civilian pattern recognizers have long known that the algorithm-based Feed (on IG/TikTok/any endlessly scrollable platform) could be manipulated for profit.
We now have definitive proof that marketing agencies are manipulating us via dummy social media accounts because they are bragging about it.1
Context
In late March, artist and writer, eliza mclamb, published an article on the manufactured buzz empire:
The piece draws on her experience as an artist in the music industry and her research into one specific marketing agency, Chaotic Good Projects.2 A few weeks ago, Vulture published a similar article delving further into the landscape of the manufactured feed and clip farms.
Both articles focus largely on the music industry. Vulture also explores the court of public opinion. Feed manipulation doesn’t end with the entertainment industry though, esp when you consider components like the Russian influence on the 2016 election.
I’ve seen a ton of folks cover the mechanisms of HOW folks manufacture the feed for consumerism (clip farms, creating “relatable” memes to encourage shares, Heated Rivalry edits), but not a lot about how we can move forward.
When I sat down to write about how we can handle the fake feed, knowing it’s basically impossible to truly opt out, I accidentally wrote 4000 words.
Realizing I was approaching textbook-chapter-length, I decided to turn my fake feed exploration into a series to maximize reading comprehension and minimize “It’s! all! CONNECTED!!” ramblings.
People manipulate the algorithm for a few key reasons: to make money, influence culture, and/or commit acts of evil.
The powers that be manipulating the algorithm might have wildly different goals, but they all happen via the same apparatus and because of the late capitalist hell we live in.
Chaotic Good creating thousands of IG reels to boost Homewrecker by Sombr3 is different than foreign powers using bots to destabilize U.S. elections. Talking about developing your own taste outside the algorithm can feel a little flippant in comparison to the ways fascism permeates online. It’s still all interconnected. You can see how I blacked out while writing. ANYWAYS…
Fake Feed lore drop
Back to the fake feed and how we got here.
If you take a spin through Eliza’s incredible article, she talks about how Chaotic Good promises the ability to manufacture relevance for various musical acts. There are not-so-surprising names on the list — Sombr and Alex Warren — and then there are more legitimate artists like Geese and Laufey.
They build relevance and virality via “trend simulations” and “narrative campaigns,” aka dummy accounts posting a ton and then relying on herd mentality to take the wheel from there. The best (read: scariest) part, it works and Chaotic Good posits that their method is now industry standard.
“In this new landscape, is creating hundreds of fake accounts just par for the course of being a good publicist?” Eliza writes.
The answer from the tech bros is “duh,” but I imagine the average person would find it alarming that Big Algorithm is manufacturing our taste.
Classic case of if you could/not if you should.
How we got here
The fake feed, full of clips and manufactured virality, feels like the logical conclusion to late-stage capitalism’s cannibalization of the internet.
Pre-internet age, ad and marketing agencies would capture attention via creative ideas — ones that surprise and delight, make the viewer feel things, and appeal to logic/emotion/credibility. Essentially the plot of Mad Men.
Like quite literally everything else in the world, the selling cycle moved online with the dawn of the internet. It didn’t take long for something to go organically viral and make one lucky person a butt ton of money.
From there a cycle emerged: an enterprising schemer with dollar signs for eyes thought “huh, can I replicate this phenomenon for myself?” and found brilliant success. Maybe they created a marketing agency based on the scheme and bragged about it in a publication, preying upon the ignorance of humanity. Humans, though, are only oblivious for so long. The general public becomes aware of ye olde viral formula, and it suddenly doesn’t work anymore.
A new enterprising schemer rises from the ashes of the last one, developing an even more sophisticated way to game the system. Rinse and repeat, getting more and more scam-y until all short- form video content is clipped episodes of Suits, “did I just write the song of the summer” car confessions, or AITA posts read aloud by bots over Subway Surfer videos.
If we know the feed is fake, shouldn’t someone be doing something about it?
An unknowingly manipulated feed, selling you shit willy-nilly, is the type of thing you might expect a government agency like the Federal Trade Commission to protect us from.
Once upon a time, the FTC used its powers more wisely, like making influencers disclose when they were being paid to promote a product #ad. However, with the current administration and how the internet concocts new schemes at the speed of light, we cannot rely on a government agency to step in.4
We also cannot rely on the platforms that have algorithm-based feeds. Their primary concern is keeping you on the app as long as possible and making more money. Meta might make it seem like they are committed to “deleting bots.” Meanwhile, Facebook literally has scam ads and does not care. Basically, I don’t trust ‘em as far as I can throw ‘em.
Should we still advocate for consumer protections via the FTC and bully corporations into treating us better? Of course!
But like everything else in the world, only we can save us.
Quitting social media?? In this economy??
As much as I’d love to unplug the internet, social media’s presence in our lives is so ubiquitous, asking folks to opt out entirely feels like telling horny teens about the miracles of abstinence instead of, you know, condoms.
If “stop scrolling and commit yourself to a life in the analog monastery!” worked as advice, we would have wayyyy more bog witches and mayhaps more overthrown governments.
Instead, we have tiny evil computers in our pockets, optimized to make scrolling feel like drug use, that we rely on to function in the world.
Maybe it’s my surprisingly pragmatic nature5 or my commitment to harm reduction, but asking people to quit cold turkey and leave the 21st-century town square doesn’t feel fair. I’m guessing too, because you’re reading this piece on Substack, you might not want to leave the whole shebang.6
All we can really do is educate ourselves on how we’re being manipulated digitally, increase our media literacy, and use social media even a smidge more mindfully. And I say all this as someone who has watched entire episodes of 911 via YouTube Shorts in the shower because I cannot be alone with my thoughts.7
Here’s what you can expect in the series:
These are working titles, but you get catch my drift. Also, I am taking requests because why the hell not. Drop a comment below of what else you want explored.
Breaking the feed spell, cultivating your own tastes, and becoming a worse digital consumer
The fascist feed and misinformation Olympics
Signs you’re being manipulated online
How do we show up online as regular-degular people?
That’s all for now, folks!
Moodboard for writing this:
If you have made it this far, I have a gift for u 🤲 🎁
It feels so freakin’ corny that these tech megalomaniacs will proudly tell you their evil plan. See: Sam Altman explaining the intelligence should be bought and sold. And whatever Joe Lim of Floodify is talking about in the Vulture article. Cliche villain BS.
Chaotic Good is a dot ORG??????? Bro, I hate THAT.
unfortch, this song does have a lil kick to it
Outside of the U.S obvi, y’all have protections... I’m so jealous
somehow I’m a pragmatic Pisces idk
I’m not interested in letting the technofascists win the internet!! The internet has FANFICTION and NEOPETS!
let him who is without sin etc
GREAT POST KP!! a funny off the dome thought that came out of my very empty head is how paradoxical the worldwide web is, where two conflict things can be true - namely I’m thinking about how:
- the algorithm makes everyone and everything more samey than ever. hooks all look the same. info is all the same. slop is sloppidy slop. and yes, certain marketing agencies can control this and big zuck especially can manipulate this mystical thread to commit electronic crimes of influence against humanity; as per your article.
- due to hyperalgorithmism, your experience of the internet is wickedly different to mine, and a serious echo chamber of what you already believe in and adjacent items that the algorithm realises people similar to you are also into. we do not share the same feeds the same way that people in the past had the radio, drank coca cola, and thought michael jackson was the coolest bloke ever.
and this is really strange because this ballot box stuffing of the algorithm, in some ways, reduces the churn of point number two. is that a good thing? not really. one is not better than the other and i’d prefer not be manipulated - but it’s just… intriguing, you know?
also, love your meme of “that’s all for now” - keen to say I’m on the bright side of the bus
as someone who has been guilty of so many “it’s all connected” ramblings lately that it’s become a terminating catchphrase, i felt this heavy