Algorithmic Authority
Influential users and recommendation algorithm design quietly shape what people see, what gains attention, and what gets silenced.
When an account with 219 million followers interacts with a smaller one — not by blocking or arguing, but simply by muting — the consequences are immediate. The smaller account’s visibility drops from 150,000 views to 20,000 overnight. No notice. No rule broken. Dimmed into irrelevance.
It’s a form of shadowbanning — not imposed by moderators, but activated by the algorithm in response to a high-weight engagement signal.
On the flip side, the same signal that suppresses can also elevate. When a high-reach account interacts — sometimes with nothing more than a vague comment or a repost — the algorithm reads it as endorsement. Content is boosted, visibility spikes, and narratives take flight.
Even low-effort, repetitive interactions—likes, generic replies—can act like a controlled dose of AstroBoost™ – just enough to simulate momentum and trigger amplification.
Social proof used to reflect crowd wisdom. Now it reflects algorithmic endorsement — triggered not by consensus, but by proximity to influence. A single interaction can distort scale, making selected content appear widely supported.
The result? Artificial popularity. Boosted narratives. Organic ideas buried by engineered reach. The crowd didn’t pick it—the algorithm did, based on who touched
37 Comments
MaxPock
X is once again full of bots selling crypto and financial services .
fouc
Reading that I couldn't help but think there's parallels to HN. At least HN tries to be transparent about "the algorithm", and it's essentially a dumb algorithm compared to what X/FB/etc use.
gruez
I'm surprised how many upvotes this got (40 points as of me writing this comment), given how little "meat" is actually in this article. The author presents a graph where views for a given user dropped precipitously after a "feud with musk". That's certainly suspicious, and was worth bringing up, but the rest of the blog is just pontificating about "social engineering" and "perception cascades", backed by absolutely nothing. Are people just upvoting based on title and maybe the first paragraph? This post could have been truncated to the graph and very little would be lost.
qnleigh
Do we know that this is how the algorithm actually works? The article only shows one plot of one specific instance, and there could be more than one explanation for the sudden drop in viewership (especially given the involvement of Twitter's owner).
a_c
Neuro network mimics human brain, what fires together wires together. X mimics human psychology (still brain). Call it halo effect, appeal to authority, selection bias. Some say it is a bug, some say it is a feature, a feature in decision making that developed under limited time and energy. Selecting X, but not other social network, as the subject of the article is a selection bias, it is also a feature, so is X's selection of sorting criteria
janalsncm
The low effort boosting replies are what get me. A lot of tech billionaires (who supposedly work harder than any mortal) spend a ton of time with one word / emoji replies.
At least this is visible boosting. The next step is to boost behind the scenes, entirely unauditable. All of the power (and more) of an editor, none of the accountability.
riffic
It’s hilarious to look back at old threads on the orange site where people made wild claims, like calling Twitter a “public utility” without much thought. But honestly, I always saw the company as vulnerable to these issues. That’s why Masnick’s article “Protocols not Platforms” is still so spot-on.
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a…
arrowsmith
Not to defend Musk but it's not like "X" was a bastion of neutrality and even-handedness before he took over (the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story being one prominent example.) Nor are the platforms Musk doesn't own yet.
Does the author of this piece take a principled stand against censorship and bias? Or is he just upset that the censorship and bias isn't going in his preferred direction?
aeturnum
> Social proof used to reflect crowd wisdom. Now it reflects algorithmic endorsement — triggered not by consensus, but by proximity to influence. A single interaction can distort scale, making selected content appear widely supported.
I think this is barking up the right tree with the wrong lesson – these things are the same. Elon Musk, for worse mostly, is a social influencer. You can tell because a lot of people follow him. I am sure the algorithm in unreasonably kind to him (as he can write it) but it's also true that a lot of people care what he does and what he does changes what people care about.
The real question here, to me, is: does this kind of mass social calculus make any kind of real sense? Can we actually extend the idea of interest to 219,000,000 people or do we leave the coordinate system at some point? I suspect it doesn't hold up.
I am a long time believer in the need for good algorithmic filtering. There is more happening in the world than I have attention for and I want a machine to help me. Most solutions are quite bad because they are focused on how much money they can make instead of how much they can help. But I think it's a real problem and the bad, money-grubbing algorithms that surround us now are making our lives much worse.
Ultimately I think this comes back to operationalizing human relationships. What does it math for Musk to have that many followers? This is distasteful but real, I fear, in the age we live. Social influence is clearly real and we are measuring it in flawed ways and we should try and improve those flawed measurements.
mrdoops
Manufactured consensus is everywhere there is enough attention to incentivize such an effort. The worst by far is Reddit.
timewizard
Genuine social interaction is not profitable.
Trying to achieve this on a for profit platform is pure folly.
These are time wasting machines and were never truly capable of being more than that particularly once their use base reached a size where monthly churn no longer impacts the bottom line of advertising revenue.
devrandoom
X is a cult. People I know are being totally brainwashed.
There so much misinformation, fabrication and half truths out there. Repeateted over and over again in various forms.
When the full story surfaces two days later, they'll never see that on their cult hub.
zoogeny
It is a bit chilling because of the compound interest that this kind of policy incentivizes. Once you have a handful of powerful X accounts, you have the ability to generate more. So not only can you work to silence others, you can work to increase your capacity to silence others by promoting like-minded allies.
We are at the early stages of this, so we are watching the capture of influence. There is some discussion that influence is the new capital. And we are replicating the systems that allow for the accumulation of capital in this new digital age.
hadrien01
The images from the article don't seem to load, I get a NS_ERROR_REDIRECT_LOOP according to the devtools
tonetegeatinst
Wouldn't that random tweet about the tariff pause that caused a market crash be an outlier if not proof this isn't always true?
Random obscure account tweets about a 90 day pause…a few people talk about it….and suddenly news outlets ran with it and the markets freaked out.
bromuk
Interesting
wetpaws
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renewiltord
What's fascinating about Twitter is watching as everyone who claimed it was going to collapse without a few SREs is now talking about how it's too powerful and controls opinion.
w10-1
Is the title ironic? Is this helping?
"Manufacturing consent", the book by Chomsky and Herman, details techniques that are largely unused in this situation. Chomsky's book by disclosing the hidden editor works against the effect rather than for it.
Here it's closer to a state-run media outlet, with the exact ambiguity that implies: a known editor pretending to be objective, except here the editor only really cares about certain topics, and others are encouraged to roam freely (if traceably).
In Chomsky's case, the editor's power comes from being covert, but only if people are fooled, so the book works to diminish it. In this case, the power comes from the editor being known unstoppable. You have to accept it and know yourself as accepting it — which means you have to buy in as a fan to avoid seeing yourself as herded, or out yourself as an outsider. Since most people take the default step of doing nothing, they get accumulating evidence of themselves as herded or a fan. It's a forcing function (like "you're with us or against us") that conditions acceptance rather than manufacturing consent.
In this case, articles (showing what happens when you oppose the editor) and ensuing discussions like this (ending in no-action) have the reinforcing effect of empowering the editor, and increase the self-censuring effects. They contribute to the aim and effect of conditioning acceptance. So they might not be helpful. (Better would be the abandonment of a platform when it fails to fulfill fairness claims, but that's hard to engineer.)
Synaesthesia
Exact same thing happens on Facebook. There are certain posts and ideas which are expressly forbidden, others which are discouraged and ones which are boosted.
torlok
Why does this article talk about generic "influential people" influencing "the algorithm"? Didn't Musk force Twitter engineers on a Sunday night to artificially boost him after he got less views than the president? What's the evidence that this is some kind of a general issue, and not just the owner being petty.
languid-photic
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whalesalad
Spend ten minutes on X with a new account and this is clear as day. It’s one of the most surreal communities on earth at this point. Everything is gaslighting/hyperbole.
Joking_Phantom
Every social media platform is manipulated by it's owners and elites. There's no way to get around it, not when your KPIs are user engagement and advertising dollars.
Twitter has become a particularly nasty version of it. In the before times, Google, Twitter, Reddit, etc. usually spent their efforts trying to manipulate things in a mostly benign way.
If you like free markets, then you must be opposed to Twitter. This is a market controlled by a few. Competition is rigorously hunted down. Lies and fake social proof packaged into "free speech." Only the chosen ones are allowed audience.
This is the opposite of capitalism. This is the worst of cronyism.
Force switching all accounts to unfollow Democracts and follow Republicans and Elon, signal boosting right wing conspiracy theorists, blocking or suspending left or liberal accounts, it's just naked power centralization all the way down…
627467
The article’s angst over X’s “manufactured consensus” is overblown. Influence has always been curated—editors, town criers, or whoever grabbed the mic were the analog algorithms. X’s sin isn’t some evil algo: it’s just running at planetary scale. We’ve ditched thousands of small communities for one global shouting match, so naturally mega-influencers steal the show. Algorithms are just the gears keeping this chaos moving because we crave instant, worldwide chatter. Some folks pretend a perfect algorithm exists (bsky, IG/fb) but it doesn’t come from one team, one database, or one set of criteria. The “perfect” system is a messy web of different algorithms in different spaces, barely connected, each with its own context. Calling out X’s code misses the mark. We signed up for this planetary circus and keep buying tickets.
casenmgreen
It looks like Twitter is suppressing posts until they are spammed by hate bots and then making those posts visible.
https://bsky.app/profile/willhaycardiff.bsky.social/post/3lk…
I've also seen evidence of posts Twitter likes (violent and hateful anti-immigration posts – literally a photo of a dummy tied to a chair being shot in the back of the head) being spammed by love bots.
Twitter seems to be a propaganda channel, run by Donald/Elon/et al.
gmd63
Metrics on X have lost all of their credibility since Elon took over.
The guy likely juices his own numbers, floods posts he likes with botted engagement, etc.
Likes are private so he can delude Trumpers into thinking they're popular in a sea of bots.
ein0p
Looking at the comments, the blowback to this is pretty wonderful to see. There's hope for HN after all. More and more people are realizing that they don't have to blindly subscribe to the "current thing".
o1inventor
Spend a decade crying wolf or "muh fascists" at every little thing we disagree with, and suddenly everyone is surprised when the public tunes it out and we get fascists.
"who made you this way?"
"you did."
– american politics circa 2025
mcintyre1994
I wonder if the algorithm is affected by blocking the high profile account in these cases. Eg I blocked Musk ages ago because if you don’t then the algorithm just constantly pushes his ‘content’ at you. So does the algorithm still prioritise things he’s interacted with for me, or does it only do that for people who haven’t blocked him? I definitely get stuff recommended that I expect he might interact with, but I don’t know if that’s actually specifically why it’s being pushed at me.
jadbox
Just my personal antidotal experience, my reach on X in the last six months has tanked more than 10-100x and my usage hasn't really changed. At this point, I feel my reach has basically dropped to near zero unless some "big name influencer" boosts it with a comment.
neilv
> When an account with 219 million followers interacts with a smaller one — not by blocking or arguing, but simply by muting — the consequences are immediate. The smaller account’s visibility drops from 150,000 views to 20,000 overnight.
Is this true on Twitter/X?
If so, what is the rationale?
jhp123
I wouldn't think you need any deep insight or analysis to understand that a media site privately held by a government official is propaganda
cadamsdotcom
In this modern era we heave under the weight of decades of exponential growth. In some cases it’s actually “only” compound growth – but the result has been the same (and very ironic): ossification through stratification.
There are behemoths living among us. There will soon be social media accounts with enough sway to manufacture truth.
What needs to be learned is society is like a national park. Left to its own devices it will end up trashed – people leave garbage, move in and use it for whatever they like. So, we fund a service that keeps parks maintained. We understand the benefits of the National Park Service because they are visible and we are visual creatures. But for some reason we have a more laissez-faire attitude to unchecked accumulation and its downstream effects.
It’s risky for power to be so concentrated. We’re forced to hope for benevolence and there’s no backup plan.
What more can be done to show the orders of magnitude of difference between the most and least powerful?
hammock
This is a good summary of psyops currently in use by all sides of US and foreign governments and private interests against the American people, and applies to all forms of media, not just Twitter.
-__---____-ZXyw
Is there a curated and serious resource from any public body or private individual documenting specific cases of abuse by Twitter?
Any links greatly appreciated.
hamilyon2
MeowMeowBeenz or Nosedive, in real world