Algorithmic laundering
Manufacturing enough activity around a claim on a platform that the platform's own systems promote it, so that it reaches the mainstream as "trending" or "viral" with its origin hidden.
Citation laundering cleans a claim through institutions; algorithmic laundering cleans it through machines. A fringe claim is seeded in a small community, pushed by bots and puppets until it trends, picked up by outlets that report what is trending, and cited thereafter as a matter of public concern. At each step the platform, not any person, appears to be the source of its prominence, and the outlets that carry it can say they merely reported the trend.
Ryan Holiday described the manual version in 2012, "trading up the chain" from blogs to local news to national, and Marwick and Lewis documented the platform version in 2017. The device is a supply chain for laundering fringe content into news. Exploits Availability Heuristic and Authority Bias transferred to the algorithm.
Historical examples
Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying, a marketer's confession, described "trading up the chain": plant a story with a small blog that needs content, tip a larger outlet to the blog's post, and let each level cite the one below until the claim reaches national television with no one having checked it. The book is the manual for the pre-platform form of the device.
Holiday, Ryan. Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. New York: Portfolio, 2012.
Marwick and Lewis's report for Data & Society mapped how fringe communities, bots, and trolling networks moved content through platform trending systems into mainstream coverage, and how journalists' reliance on "what's trending" made them the last link in the chain. Whitney Phillips's follow-up, The Oxygen of Amplification, interviewed the journalists and found the mechanism was understood and hard to resist.
Marwick, Alice, and Rebecca Lewis. Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2017; Phillips, Whitney. The Oxygen of Amplification. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2018.
In advertising and commerce
"Seeding" campaigns pay small accounts to post about a product in a coordinated window so that the platform's systems register a surge, promote the product to its recommendation feeds, and generate coverage of the "phenomenon." The trade calls this launch choreography; the audience sees something spontaneously popular.
Marwick and Lewis (2017), on commercial seeding; Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lying (2012), on the manufacture of viral launches.
Find a news story that says something is "going viral" or "trending." Where did it start? Who were the first accounts to push it? What else did the outlet verify?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
The rumor began on an anonymous forum, was pushed to trending by 500 new accounts overnight, and appeared on the morning news as "a claim circulating widely online."
What to notice. A fringe claim laundered through the platform's ranking into mainstream coverage, origin hidden.
"Social media is asking whether the minister knew." The only evidence cited is the number of posts asking.
What to notice. The trend is the story's sole source; the manufacturing of the trend goes unexamined.
A blog post about the "controversy" was tipped to a local paper, which was tipped to a national one, which called it "growing public concern."
What to notice. Trading up the chain; the manual form of the device, before platforms did the promotion.
Sources
- Holiday, Ryan. Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. New York: Portfolio, 2012. ISBN 978-1591846284
- Marwick, Alice, and Rebecca Lewis. Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2017.
- Phillips, Whitney. The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators Online. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2018.