#algorithmic ragebait

On *some* social media sites, there has been an onslaught of anti-Taylor Swift hate revolving around her supposed conservative leanings and alleged racist dog whistles in TLOAS. It is an incredibly stupid and obsessive firestorm of assumed conclusions and performative activism on behalf of black women, some of whom have accused Taylor of dogwhistling, and others who have said they disagree and don't want white people speaking for them. There's a lot of straight up denial that Taylor is the person she's shown herself to be over the years. It's a big mess. I saw someone suggest that this was troll farms at work, doing this on behalf of Donald Trump, but I don't buy that, because this is something a lot of people have believed for a while.

Then... I realized something.

Twitter was spamming it, but it's died down. Threads still is spamming it, and it flared up even more when someone decided that a lightning bolt necklace was Nazi imagery. But BlueSky wasn't, and I have no doubt the criticism that's blowing up other sites is in fact there.

This is an *algorithmic* smear campaign, and Zuck's crew is the one pushing it the hardest.

I did a bit of an experiment. I posted something on Threads on the subject, saying a very short version of what I said in the first paragraph above. I am nobody on Threads -- no reason to think anyone will see it.

Nine likes in seven hours. Over twenty in two days. It's not much, but it's a lot more than I should be getting given my profile there. Meta is using the algorithm to ragebait against Taylor Swift, and Twitter was doing the same thing but got bored. No more than a handful of people would pay attention to the discourse if this wasn't the case.