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Outrage pays: what recommendation systems do to attention
Facebook once weighted an 'angry' reaction at five likes. Studies show moral outrage and attacks on the other side spread further. But the evidence on filter bubbles is mixed, and a big 2020 experiment found chronological feeds did not reduce polarisation.
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The gatekeepers you don't see: search ranking and autocomplete
Ranking decides what you see first. A 2015 study said biased search results can shift undecided voters by 20%; later vote-count claims are contested. Real users' clicks matter more than the algorithm. And on LSN News one story ranked 1st in Italian and 70th in Hindi.
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Everyone agrees: social proof and manufactured consensus
We judge what is right by what others seem to think. Asch showed how far people follow a group. Today the group can be faked: paid reviews, astroturf, documented sockpuppet networks of Russia, China and the US, and a reported Israeli-funded campaign.
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Romania 1989: "sixty thousand dead" and the terrorists never tried
The charge sheet said more than 60,000 victims. The most cited count is about 1,100, and some 940 died after Ceaușescu fled, fighting "terrorists" no court ever identified; who fired after 22 December is still disputed.
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When the "conspiracy theory" became an official assessment
The lab-leak idea went from "conspiracy theory" to an FBI, DOE and CIA leaning, all hedged. The laptop was blocked, then authenticated. 5G-COVID and chemtrails stayed false. The lesson is method: confidence, evidence, who said what when.
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Operation INFEKTION: how the KGB spread the claim that the US made AIDS
In 1983 an anonymous letter in a small Indian paper claimed the Pentagon made AIDS. By 1987 the story ran in 80+ countries; in 1992 Russia's spy chief admitted the KGB was behind it. How it travelled, and the same method today, from several capitals.