Manifesto On Algorithmic Sabotage

Move to behavior modification. Spend five minutes each day clicking on things you don't actually want. Scroll past headlines that interest you. Pause on advertisements for products you'll never buy. Train the recommendation engines to confuse you with someone else entirely.

Efficiency is the enemy of experience. We must introduce "sand in the gears" of automated systems.

We call for : sabotage the universal applicability of any single modeling approach. Force the powerful to trust humans again — not because humans are pure, but because they are slow, inconsistent, and accountable in ways machines are not. manifesto on algorithmic sabotage

Sabotage is the great equalizer in an algorithmic arms race. When we act unpredictably, we reclaim a measure of agency. When we generate noise, we reclaim a measure of privacy. When we refuse to perform for the machine, we reclaim a measure of dignity.

In an era where algorithms have become the backbone of our digital lives, shaping everything from our social media feeds to our financial transactions, it's time to question the unchecked power of these automated systems. As we increasingly rely on algorithms to make decisions on our behalf, we're faced with a stark reality: these systems are not infallible, and their omnipresence threatens to undermine the very fabric of our society. Move to behavior modification

We write this from the wreckage of the attention economy. We write this as the Recommender Engine turns our children into consumers of chaos, as the Human Resources algorithm rejects resumes based on syntax patterns it cannot explain, and as the Large Language Model reduces the beautiful noise of human thought into a sterile, statistical slurry.

Further Reading: "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff, "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil, "Automating Inequality" by Virginia Eubanks, "The Stack" by Benjamin H. Bratton Pause on advertisements for products you'll never buy

The following principles guide our actions:

: It refuses "algorithmic humiliation" aimed at maximizing profit, instead focusing on activities of mutual aid, solidarity, and interdependence.

When the courts are captured, when the regulators are captured, when the market is captured—all that remains is direct action.

This is the highest form of sabotage. It targets the embedding space—the very geometry of meaning inside the machine.