One hell of a piece Mike and glad you’ve highlighted something I’ve expressed to people in Silicon Valley, Dumbo and anyone willing to engage for nearly two decades now.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the open newsfeed model cannot possibly be the default state. We need to get back to basics, focus on the individual and trust that most will come to their senses and consume content closer to reality the majority of the time. I can send you what I have in mind directly, but in the meantime here is a clip I recorded and uploaded to YouTube as to how I’m seeing all this.
Crankery driven by social media is a second-order problem compared to the abandonment of truth by the entire Republican party. That's been driven not only by Fox and talk radio but by an array of think tanks like Heritage and Heartland which serve to provide the defences of an epistemically closed system. A handful of congressional republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene push crankery. The vast majority push equally delusional views (climate science denial, Biden conspiracy theories etc) drawn from superficially respectable sources.
I think you're describing the symptoms rather than the disease. The Republican Party didn't create the epistemic conditions I'm analyzing - they're exploiting them.
Heritage and Heartland have been producing ideologically motivated research for decades. What changed isn't their dishonesty - it's that social media created distribution channels where their content can bypass traditional gatekeepers and reach audiences through emotional engagement rather than institutional credibility.
The Crank Singularity explains WHY these strategies work now in ways they didn't before. Climate denial and conspiracy theories aren't successful because Republicans are uniquely bad actors - they're successful because the current information environment systematically rewards confident, emotionally satisfying explanations over complex, uncertain ones.
You're focused on the players currently winning the game. I'm analyzing the game mechanics that make certain strategies viable. If we changed the epistemic structure - if truth had systematic advantages over falseness in gaining attention and authority - then political strategy would have to change accordingly.
But as long as cranks have structural advantages in the attention economy, political actors will continue exploiting those advantages. The problem isn't partisan - it's architectural.
An obvious test of the "distribuiton channel" explanation is whether we see something similar on the left of the political spectrum. I'd say the opposite: social media has acted to dispel (secret) conspiracy theories rather than to promote them. I never see left references to the Trilateral Commission any more, for example. Of course, Project 2025 was a conspiracy but it was out in the open, the only question was whether to believe Trump;s disavowal
I observed this ten years ago with respect to anti-vaxerism, which used to be coded as left, and was j being pushed out of leftish social media like the Huffington Post even as the right took it up.
You're actually demonstrating my point rather than refuting it. Social media didn't eliminate conspiracy thinking on the left - it optimized it for different audience preferences.
The old-school conspiracy theories you mention (Trilateral Commission, etc.) were intellectually dense, required extensive background knowledge, and appealed to a relatively small audience. They weren't optimized for viral engagement.
What replaced them were conspiracy theories that worked better in the attention economy: anti-corporate narratives (Big Pharma, Big Tech surveillance), Trump-Russia theories that generated massive engagement for years, and QAnon-adjacent theories about fascist plots. These spread widely because they were more emotionally satisfying to liberal audiences.
Your anti-vax example actually proves the point perfectly. When social media algorithms started optimizing for engagement, anti-vax content migrated from left-coded wellness communities to right-coded political communities - not because the underlying psychology changed, but because it found more receptive and engaged audiences on the right.
The "distribution channel" explanation predicts exactly what you observed: conspiracy theories that generate more engagement within specific tribal contexts will thrive, while those that don't will fade. Social media didn't make the left more rational - it made left-wing conspiracy thinking conform to what generates engagement among liberal audiences.
The epistemic structure I'm describing is politically neutral. It rewards emotional engagement over truth regardless of ideology.
Looking at the examples, conspiracy theories about Big Pharma are definitely right-coded nowadays, like anti-vaxerism.
At the other end of the spectrum, it seems strange that you would refer to claims about fascism as "QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories" when you have correctly pointed out that the Republicans have succeeded in establishing a fascist government. The same goes for the fact that Big Tech is engaged in large scale surveillance, now in alliance with fascism.
More generally, anti-corporate "narratives" such as the view that corporations want to break unions and exploit consumers aren't "conspiracy theories". You might disagree with some of these claims, but they don't rest on a belief that CEOs are meeting in secret to do these things - everything is out in the open.
As regards Trump and Russia, the specific claims about kompromat in the Steele dossier were ill-founded, but Trump's desire for an alliance with Russia was obvious, even if his love wasn;t reciprocated.
Spelling it out, there's nothing neutral here. Reality has a liberal bias.
Great analysis. Whereas talk radio and Fox were early broadcast manipulators of political schemas, the explosion of social media weaponized (and monetized) the talents and abilities of political “cranks” to practice the dark art of mass schema manipulation. Trump, right wing think tanks, and, belatedly, the traditional Republican party leadership (which was initially reluctant, but which held their collective noses and jumped with both feet into the fever swamp of social media crankdom) recognized the extraordinary power of social media to exponentially improve the reach and effectiveness of their “political schema manipulation schemes” (what a mouthful!). And we now have a POTUS with his own social media platform. But isn’t another, more traditional, name for all of this simply … “propaganda”?
Wow, this is a great, thorough-going, and fun way to look at the issue, and if it sticks for people, more power to it! Let's get to work! Some rather precise psychology is available to explain these things, too, for those interested, and the history of bad faith is traced quite thoroughly by Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains (2017, 300 pp). It seems tempting to grind away at multilevel chess or to dissect matters ad nauseum. Let's get on with the positive program to put our tormentors out of our misery, to rechannel adult emotions into a viable future, figure how to rescue the cripples, and to mobilize the masses for the grand march. Insightful blaming doesn't get us there; concerted restorative and accountability action do. We don't all need to know how every actor plays the game if it's the wrong game. Find your strength and your insight, and start doing your part. Let's win the hand, name our own path forward.
Just in from Cory Doctorow, and relevant to our discussion
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/22/all-day-suckers/
One hell of a piece Mike and glad you’ve highlighted something I’ve expressed to people in Silicon Valley, Dumbo and anyone willing to engage for nearly two decades now.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the open newsfeed model cannot possibly be the default state. We need to get back to basics, focus on the individual and trust that most will come to their senses and consume content closer to reality the majority of the time. I can send you what I have in mind directly, but in the meantime here is a clip I recorded and uploaded to YouTube as to how I’m seeing all this.
https://youtu.be/syJlYAr7cSw?feature=shared
Crankery driven by social media is a second-order problem compared to the abandonment of truth by the entire Republican party. That's been driven not only by Fox and talk radio but by an array of think tanks like Heritage and Heartland which serve to provide the defences of an epistemically closed system. A handful of congressional republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene push crankery. The vast majority push equally delusional views (climate science denial, Biden conspiracy theories etc) drawn from superficially respectable sources.
I think you're describing the symptoms rather than the disease. The Republican Party didn't create the epistemic conditions I'm analyzing - they're exploiting them.
Heritage and Heartland have been producing ideologically motivated research for decades. What changed isn't their dishonesty - it's that social media created distribution channels where their content can bypass traditional gatekeepers and reach audiences through emotional engagement rather than institutional credibility.
The Crank Singularity explains WHY these strategies work now in ways they didn't before. Climate denial and conspiracy theories aren't successful because Republicans are uniquely bad actors - they're successful because the current information environment systematically rewards confident, emotionally satisfying explanations over complex, uncertain ones.
You're focused on the players currently winning the game. I'm analyzing the game mechanics that make certain strategies viable. If we changed the epistemic structure - if truth had systematic advantages over falseness in gaining attention and authority - then political strategy would have to change accordingly.
But as long as cranks have structural advantages in the attention economy, political actors will continue exploiting those advantages. The problem isn't partisan - it's architectural.
An obvious test of the "distribuiton channel" explanation is whether we see something similar on the left of the political spectrum. I'd say the opposite: social media has acted to dispel (secret) conspiracy theories rather than to promote them. I never see left references to the Trilateral Commission any more, for example. Of course, Project 2025 was a conspiracy but it was out in the open, the only question was whether to believe Trump;s disavowal
I observed this ten years ago with respect to anti-vaxerism, which used to be coded as left, and was j being pushed out of leftish social media like the Huffington Post even as the right took it up.
https://crookedtimber.org/2015/02/08/has-vaccination-become-a-partisan-issue/
You're actually demonstrating my point rather than refuting it. Social media didn't eliminate conspiracy thinking on the left - it optimized it for different audience preferences.
The old-school conspiracy theories you mention (Trilateral Commission, etc.) were intellectually dense, required extensive background knowledge, and appealed to a relatively small audience. They weren't optimized for viral engagement.
What replaced them were conspiracy theories that worked better in the attention economy: anti-corporate narratives (Big Pharma, Big Tech surveillance), Trump-Russia theories that generated massive engagement for years, and QAnon-adjacent theories about fascist plots. These spread widely because they were more emotionally satisfying to liberal audiences.
Your anti-vax example actually proves the point perfectly. When social media algorithms started optimizing for engagement, anti-vax content migrated from left-coded wellness communities to right-coded political communities - not because the underlying psychology changed, but because it found more receptive and engaged audiences on the right.
The "distribution channel" explanation predicts exactly what you observed: conspiracy theories that generate more engagement within specific tribal contexts will thrive, while those that don't will fade. Social media didn't make the left more rational - it made left-wing conspiracy thinking conform to what generates engagement among liberal audiences.
The epistemic structure I'm describing is politically neutral. It rewards emotional engagement over truth regardless of ideology.
Looking at the examples, conspiracy theories about Big Pharma are definitely right-coded nowadays, like anti-vaxerism.
At the other end of the spectrum, it seems strange that you would refer to claims about fascism as "QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories" when you have correctly pointed out that the Republicans have succeeded in establishing a fascist government. The same goes for the fact that Big Tech is engaged in large scale surveillance, now in alliance with fascism.
More generally, anti-corporate "narratives" such as the view that corporations want to break unions and exploit consumers aren't "conspiracy theories". You might disagree with some of these claims, but they don't rest on a belief that CEOs are meeting in secret to do these things - everything is out in the open.
As regards Trump and Russia, the specific claims about kompromat in the Steele dossier were ill-founded, but Trump's desire for an alliance with Russia was obvious, even if his love wasn;t reciprocated.
Spelling it out, there's nothing neutral here. Reality has a liberal bias.
Great analysis. Whereas talk radio and Fox were early broadcast manipulators of political schemas, the explosion of social media weaponized (and monetized) the talents and abilities of political “cranks” to practice the dark art of mass schema manipulation. Trump, right wing think tanks, and, belatedly, the traditional Republican party leadership (which was initially reluctant, but which held their collective noses and jumped with both feet into the fever swamp of social media crankdom) recognized the extraordinary power of social media to exponentially improve the reach and effectiveness of their “political schema manipulation schemes” (what a mouthful!). And we now have a POTUS with his own social media platform. But isn’t another, more traditional, name for all of this simply … “propaganda”?
Check out this piece on schemas by Brian Klaas in his Substack blog, “The Garden of Forking Paths.” https://open.substack.com/pub/brianklaas/p/schemas-and-the-political-brain-bf9?r=255mt8&utm_medium=ios
Wow, this is a great, thorough-going, and fun way to look at the issue, and if it sticks for people, more power to it! Let's get to work! Some rather precise psychology is available to explain these things, too, for those interested, and the history of bad faith is traced quite thoroughly by Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains (2017, 300 pp). It seems tempting to grind away at multilevel chess or to dissect matters ad nauseum. Let's get on with the positive program to put our tormentors out of our misery, to rechannel adult emotions into a viable future, figure how to rescue the cripples, and to mobilize the masses for the grand march. Insightful blaming doesn't get us there; concerted restorative and accountability action do. We don't all need to know how every actor plays the game if it's the wrong game. Find your strength and your insight, and start doing your part. Let's win the hand, name our own path forward.