Algorithm-shaped identities are the makers of the disinformation poison
date
Mar 3, 2025
slug
2025-algorithm-shaped-identities-are-the-makers-of-the-disinformation-poison
status
Published
tags
disinformation
algorithm
social media
polarisation
type
Post
summary
Seeking the perfect public persona, citizens shape dystopic ideas to resemble the mirror splinters they can see in their customised universe - for a price too high.
Most people—including many academics and nearly all official stakeholders like governments and politicians—treat disinformation as a standalone issue. The common narrative suggests that the Internet's anonymity empowered bad actors to spread lies and polarize society through social media. While partly true, this perspective misses the deeper problem when viewed in isolation. Disinformation isn't new, it wasn't created by the anonymous nature of digital life nor transformed into a crisis by technology (though figures like Joseph Goebbels and Lavrentii Beria would relish Mark Zuckerberg's position). The real root of the issue lies in how we—you, me, and the vast majority of people on Earth—perceive our lives, and how this perception continues to deteriorate.
For society to overcome social media and develop new environments to integrate that do not belong to a private company, a deep fracture, like the one caused by war or another massive strife has to happen. There will be no return to old ways. Digital environments serve as incubators for fragmented identity formation while simultaneously incentivizing confrontational behaviors through algorithmic amplification and platform architectures. They have been engineered to one. purpose - sell - but they affected, reshuffled or annihilated basically all human interaction and not just online shopping. The systems seek the greatest possible means to provoke a reaction from the user. It systematically rewards performative identity signaling through moral outrage while suppressing nuanced political deliberation, ultimately reshaping collective consciousness along hyper-partisan fault lines. The majority has been rooted out from the center to become a “negative majority” - a situation where the extremes hold, together, more than half of the total, leaving zero room for negotiation.
The identitarian issue is hard to be discussed publicly because the audiences engaged with such behaviour are extremely reactionary, aggressive and unwilling to debate. In the supermarket of ideas, the consumers of the cult to the “ideal” identity are lost for good and will listen to no reason. Users increasingly construct political identities through consumption and propagation of ideologically aligned content, with adolescents demonstrating particular susceptibility to identity crystallization through online prosocial behaviors. There is no debate, just confrontation, because debates do not increase followership, likes or clout, while confrontation does, self-reinforcing whatever (and naturally, the same old issues of populism - immigration, race, religion et al, are the locomotives of the destruction).
Algorithmic recommendation systems create identity feedback loops by continuously suggesting content and connections that reinforce users' demonstrated preferences. Field experiments reveal that exposure to opposing viewpoints often strengthens pre-existing identities rather than fostering moderation, as users engage in defensive identity consolidation when encountering political outgroups. This phenomenon aligns with social identity theory's predictions about intergroup dynamics, where platform architectures transform political affiliation into salient group membership markers. The technical capacity to instantly connect with global communities sharing niche political identities accelerates departure from locally rooted, multifaceted political selves toward monolithic digital personae. In a nutshell: neurotic people are driving war tanks in downtown and every discussion becomes a civil war.