Welcome to the sci-fi fantasy electronic and alternative opera... I'm a secular Atheist/Agnostic that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism, but I do eat meat and fish. Chicken, pork and seafood mostly, but every once in a while I eat beef. I don't play guitar and I've never owned a guitar in my life, but they certainly sound good in the hands of a skilled player. Nobody has black skin, and nobody has white skin and no two people have *exactly* the same skin colour and that's a scientific fact: *everyone* has an entirely unique skin colour.

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Canada. True North Strong And Free. Free As in Friends. English. French. Multinational. We bicker with heart and very much so with a future for all in mind..

Sunday, March 29, 2026

The Junos...

I am fully aware that the Junos were on tonight and I will be watching them once they're on demand on CBC. I don't like watching anything that is being streamed or recorded live, for good reasons. I'd much rather watch it after it has been recorded. Less chance of my interfering, or being used or weaponized to interfere in that way by predatory ideologies within my midst.


I'm very much looking forward to watching them.


Brian Joseph Johns


at

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

A Short Word And Updates

Hi. Brian Joseph Johns here and of sound and sane mind, versus my earlier excursion into the out of doors where I was set upon by the representation of predatory ideologies during my trip to reload and resupply. In the near future, I will make an effort to explain what I believe motivates such activity from others, and elaborate on it enough that it might serve to protect more people than just myself. That is soon to come.


Once again, I hope to continue writing by Thursday or Friday, and once again after I've had a bit of time to heal. 


I'm certainly sane, thankfully, but maybe that's the problem. Maybe in life, it pays to be a little bit off kilter at times to deal with the rough parts, though I'll never cease my efforts to rationalize and expose such activity when its clearly organized and of malicious composure and intent. There are far too many other people out there who don't have the perspective I've been fortunate enough to have acquired in life that would likely be harmed if I withheld such insight.
 

When our ancestors took their first steps off of their own front doors (of caves presumably), they drew maps, and told stories of what they encountered beyond in order to entice the imagination of and protect the next generation from the perils out there. Like a grand tapestry of moments. The height of ecstasy, or the depths or horror or somewhere in between.


In many ways, I'm just as much an explorer as I am a storyteller, and just as often as I venture into the heights and light of the emotional and existential experience in my writing, I as a Scorpio have to delve into the depths and darkness of experience and sometimes undo the wrongs I've seen incurred along the way or there before and with one of the greatest non-physical elixirs of healing, and perhaps the one capable of harm when wielded recklessly: words.


Updates for Butterfly Dragon Reimagined are coming soon, but I'd prefer to write them when I'm ready, because this is going to be a big emotional exploration of ideas and concepts true to the spirit of Butterfly Dragon and likely to martial arts and many philosophies. Something so whimsically graceful and meek bound to something so potentially devastatingly powerful and ferocious.


Grand Tapestry of Moments Episode 4 is also coming soon thereafter, but only when I'm ready to write it. Its difficult writing in this day and age, because what I write can become weaponized against me very quickly by the very predatory ideology I've been exposing for some time. My writing is often attributed to other people, while my own identity is removed and replaced with that of another person. So in the height of my accomplishment, its most often someone else receiving the credit, while I'm being pounded and squashed by an abusive predatory ideology who have been doing this very thing for a very long time, but not if I have my way. 


Imagine that you're an actor, or a filmmaker, or a artisan tradesman of some form. You work on something for a long period of your life, maybe a year or two on a single project, carefully honing and shaping it into something of renown, almost literally putting your soul into it. Meanwhile, during that process, the entirety of your effort has been taken the credit for by other people who secretly watched you doing it the entire time, scheming a way to take it from you. Maybe by claiming it not to be your work, or by something so crazy as claiming you to be possessed by someone else who has dabbled in the same vocation and artistry, but into which you've literally poured a good portion of your life's effort. You get to the finish line and, someone else is wearing the credit for your devastatingly exhausting work and effort, while you've been socially branded with a completely different identity and reputation, and one that you are unendingly abused and punished for, despite it not being your identity at all.


I've worked more than a decade and a half creating Shhhh! Digital Media, though it began long before 2010, and all the way back to the early 1980s, when I wrote the first stories that would become A Lady's Prerogative (now called Tales of the Sanctum and more recently Era of the Spellbound) and The Butterfly Dragon, which was originally a story about the environment from the perspective of an immortal eastern dragon, who watches the activities of a bee in a field unfold, the bee choosing to give its attention to a pop can, while a nearby flower with the most succulent nectar is completely ignored. 


It wasn't until I was in high school that my writing began to gain acclaim (at Marc Garneau Collegiate), but I never pursued it at that point. I had many ambitions and interests (and lived to pursue almost every one of them to a great extent). I had friends who also dabbled in writing, and now that I've pursued something I gave up on so many years ago, I find their ghosts (through predatory ideologies) returning to lay claim to the credit for my writing. Meanwhile, I was writing before I'd even met them and that was the case for both A Lady's Prerogative and The Butterfly Dragon. I started both when I was 11 years old, back in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Fifteen years before The Craft (1996) and about fifteen years after Bewitched (1964) first aired.


I'm stating these facts because I want you to know what Shhhh! Digital Media means to me, being its creator and the only writer to have ever graced its pages so far. That might change in the future. I'm not getting any younger. Maybe the mantle will be passed along at sometime forth, to a human or non-human writer or even something more outlandish that would truly be very much a Shhhh! Digital Media-ism.


So, look forward to the current and next episodes of Butterfly Dragon Reimagined, because they're really going to be a spectacle, while Grand Tapestry of Moments Ep4 will be a voice for those approaching the next stage of their existence.


Stay safe and be well ;-)


Once again, I'll stick with my Shhhh! Digital Media colours of red black, red white, red yellow and red grey and Zoo Bobby isn't a dragon on Shhhh! Digital Media ie he isn't Weltherwithsp and never was. I own both brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com and fav.inbox@gmail.com and they're both my addresses. In other words brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com works and resides in the same home office as fav.inbox@gmail.com and there's only one person that works and lives here in Suite 701. The address link I provided with my fav.inbox@gmail.com email recently reached a million views.

Credits and attribution:


Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.


Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...


Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...


DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.


InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.


Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.


Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.


Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)


Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)


Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts


Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history


Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)


Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art



Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility


Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools


Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!


Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof


Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.


















at

Friday, March 20, 2026

Chuck Norris: In Memory of a True Martial Arts Hero

photo by Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons




Like_the_Grand_Canyon, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons



For more information about this remarkable martial artist and 
the inspiration of many generations of martial artists and fans alike, 
I highly suggest starting with this video:


Courtesy of the Biographer YouTube Channel
 
For more information about his martial arts system, visit UFAF


 Rest In Peace

At least Bruce Lee is going to have a familiar sparring partner now :-)


Thanks to Perplexity AI for assistance in putting together a worthy tribute for this martial arts hero and incredible family man.

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...


Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...


DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.


InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.


Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.


Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.


Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.ufaf.org Chuck Norris' fighting system, https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)


Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)


Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts


Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history


Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)


Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art



Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility


Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools


Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!


Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof


Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.


Soon, when people arrive in Canada for the first time, we'll be able to say: Welcome to Europe :-)



I am Brian Joseph Johns and this is Shhhh! Digital Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.com or https://www.shhhhdigital.ca in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701.























at

Thursday, March 19, 2026

Should Identity Be Based Upon Consistency Of Character Or Physical Biomarkers?



Identity Crimes


Here's a scenario. You wake up one day in the wee hours of the morning, and begin work on a project for a client, perhaps working on a website design or online presence campaign and you hear outside of the front door of your semi-detached home an altercation going on between people who are making quite a ruckus for you and your neighbours.


You continue working, trying to ignore the altercation, which although it has not escalated, it continues without calming or wavering. Their noise level remains the same as you try to work, until you've just about had it and decide to confront the situation yourself.


You go to your front door and open it up, and stand on the front porch and ask in a firm and bold voice for the two men to keep it down. They turn to you and begin trying to lure you into their conflict but you're not having any of it. Instead you address them once again in a firm voice and remind them that other people are still trying to sleep and have to get up for work at some point soon. They turn and upon realizing that the situation has now turned against them in terms of the Casus Belli, they turn and leave, each going their own direction.


From that point forward, your day continues and you're finding that throughout the course of your work day (you work from home like many Canadians currently do), there are more and more situations of a similar nature that seem to be drawing you further and further in. Noise here, a conflict there. More and more they interfere in your work day, but in the interest of keeping obstacles affecting your day to a minimum, you deal with them one at a time.


Perhaps the wise thing might have been in each of those cases to call the Police to have them come and sort things out, but by the time they arrived likely each of the situations would could have been solved, meaning you could get back to work instead of losing two or three hours waiting for the problem to be solved. Not that the Police are that slow and its not a criticism of their work, but in many cases it seems that you could probably solve these problems and get back to your work much more quickly than otherwise.


A few days go by, and you've turned in your project to the client and are awaiting the pay, but by the third day it hasn't come. You decide due to budget constraints and pressures to investigate, and after doing some calling and follow-up calls, you find out that someone else received your payment cheque. Your identity has been stolen, however, not by the usual means where some steals a credit card or identification and then uses it to commit financial fraud of some form, but rather the perpetrators are part of an ideological collective who decided that you were not behaving like yourself, a web designer, but behaving more like a Police Officer, or Security Guard, so they the membership of this ideological collective (whose reach you didn't know was so extensive) arranged to have your payment addressed and sent to someone else who was more consistent with being a web designer and brand promoter than you were. To them, you were being more consistent with being a Police Officer or Security Guard, but no payment from the city has been issued to you for that role, to compensate for the fact that said group had your payment sent to someone who did not work for it.


This is a form of identity theft that has been gaining traction for years, perhaps secretly so over the last couple of decades, and though it rarely involves financial transactions, it does involve payments through a secretive underground barter system that permeates many grey and black-markets throughout big cities. Where the theft of your effort can be used to purchase services and goods, most of which are illegal or at the very least, controlled by law. This is an identity scam that exploits your identity based upon the consistency of your behaviour with your day to day life. If you are not consistent with it, by the standards of a group that secretly permeates much of society to a small degree, the members of that group can act to take your efforts from you and award them to someone else more consistent with you and your being, so that they may use them in this black-market barter system and by narcotics and sex, while in most cases, the same high control group will then treat you as if you are someone completely different from your own identity.

Welcome to the new form of identity theft.


Are We Ourselves? 


That depends how much it might benefit someone else to be you, and considering that we are living in a society that is more and more controlled by secretive collectives and predatory ideological groups, this question is very pertinent to the times, and the first answer I've given is probably the most valid answer.


You are yourself as long as its not beneficial to someone else to a high degree to benefit from being you, especially if a group feels that your behaviour is inconsistent with your day to day acumen and activity, and hence uses their collective power to take your identity and to give it to someone else who can use the value of your output to buy goods and services on a barter system based black-market.


If you think that this sounds like the plot to one of my books or stories, perhaps one from The Butterfly Dragon or Grand Tapestry of Moments, you're dead wrong. This is an activity that is going on regularly every day in the streets of this city, where someone else can wear your identity, while yours is secretly replaced with that of someone else, and often without your knowing. You'll only become aware when you notice that people are treating you differently, and things come into your life that are geared towards the tastes of someone else.


As a web developer, you even notice that the advertising that is based upon the analytics associated with your identity and online activity is very different from what it usually is, as if an admin somewhere, has taken your unique analytics ID and swapped it with that of someone else. Now, your analytics data is driving the advertising and suggestions feed on their computers and devices with regard to online activity, while you're receiving suggestions and advertising that is geared to someone else's life that is completely different from yours.


You suddenly start noticing that you're receiving advertising related to clearing your criminal record (thinking, when did I acquire a criminal record?) and a slew of other online analytics related content that is very obviously geared towards someone else.


Fortunately, you have a friend in the business of analytics and you get fire him an email, explaining the situation and ask him if such a thing were possible. If one or more admins could get together as a joke, and swap the analytics IDs of two people?


She responds:


Yes, in principle a small group of privileged insiders could deliberately swap two people’s IDs in an internal system, but in practice it would be risky, highly traceable, and a clear violation of law and company policy.


What makes it technically possible


Admins with high privileges can usually edit or override key fields in identity graphs or credit files (including internal customer IDs) as part of legitimate maintenance, corrections, and dispute handling.


We know from “mixed file” credit-report cases that data for two people can be merged or mis-attributed due to errors in matching logic, bad inputs, or manual mistakes; the same technical mechanisms could be abused intentionally.


Insider-threat research treats “unauthorized data modification” as a common abuse pattern when staff have broad, under-monitored access.


What pushes against it (controls and incentives)
  • Major bureaus and data brokers are subject to laws like the FCRA in the U.S. and analogous regimes elsewhere, which require “reasonable procedures” for accuracy; intentional tampering would be textbook non-compliance and create direct liability.

  • Internal change controls, audit logs, and role-based access are standard mitigations; when errors like mixed files occur, they can often be traced back to specific processes or systems, which is why there are lawsuits and enforcement actions.

  • From an incentive standpoint, swapping two people’s identities even “as a joke” creates enormous downside (regulatory fines, lawsuits, potential criminal exposure, job loss) and zero upside for the employees, making it an archetypal insider-threat scenario organizations design controls to prevent.

How this shows up in the real world
  • The documented real-world version is not “joke swaps” but accidental “mixed credit files,” where one person’s data ends up attached to another’s profile due to name/SSN/address similarity or matching-algorithm quirks.

  • These mix-ups are frequent enough that law firms and regulators have standing guidance on spotting and disputing them, which implies the underlying data models are mutable and that mistakes (and therefore hypothetically malicious changes) are technically feasible.

So: technically feasible, especially for a coordinated group of admins with sufficient rights; practically, it would be an obvious, logged, and legally radioactive insider attack, not something they could safely do as a joke, but it would certainly be possible and even trivially so. Would I do it? No, but I'm not every admin. When the victims are individuals, in the scheme of things, there's little they can do. The admins might claim it to have been a mistake or a mix-up, in which case its swept under the carpet in just the same way that saying "oops" after you drop that hundred dollar vase, suddenly makes it an accident.


You thank her for her insight and go about trying to get your money back.


So now that you understand the context of the title of this post, what's the answer? 

Are we ourselves when we behave most consistently and most conformingly and least creatively, or are we ourselves according to our physical biomarkers, and when we're being most creative and adventurous and taking chances by doing things that slightly overstep our boundaries and improve the world in some small way?


Scenarios like these are becoming more and more commonplace as time goes on, and their negative effects can wear on individuals and a society as things of this nature occur more and more often, and those effects can lead to other potentially dangerous situations that arise as the pressure in the boiler pot increases.


The scenario that I just outlined are very close to scenarios I've experienced personally, and those I've been tracking and investigating online as a personal challenge to try to help leave this world a little bit better than it was when I got here.


I can tell you from personal experience, as being someone whose work and sense of accomplishment depends upon both my online work, and my identity, and that when people, especially predatory ideological collectives infringe upon those aspects of my life, it really does bring out that willfully forceful and determined presence that would take down whatever obstacle there was in order to deal with such a problem, and sometimes that side of me can be very protective and hypervigilant, though never abusive but certainly not the way I want to live my life all of the time.


This article isn't just for me though, because I know that these same things are happening to many other people and if someone doesn't speak up, that pressure will build and someone or a lot of somebodies might get hurt. 


Sometimes people want to express it, but they don't understand what's going on under the hood of this wonderful and marvelous technology that has helped us to shape medicine and progress in ways that have benefited humanity beyond measure. However, any technology can also be misused, and in speaking up about this, I hope to alleviate the pressure and give credibility to those who've also experienced this.


Keep in mind though that a good portion of what I've expressed here deals with not the technology or its misuse, and remind you that technology is a tool. There also the fact that there is an ideological underground that is organized enough to quickly conduct such activity on a whim, while maintaining the means to swap people's identities (via social engineering and technology) and then use their effort as payments in a black-market barter system for narcotics and sex trafficking. These are pretty serious issues, and most women who are part of that trafficking network are not there because they want to be. They're there because they have no choice, and I'd never tell a woman what she can and can't do with her own body.


One thing that will certainly confirm what I'm speaking about is the fact that this very article will undoubtedly be given to the credit of someone with whom my own identity has been unknowingly swapped, and if this were a chess game, the people doing so will essentially be putting themselves into checkmate. They're proving my entire article and the argument I've presented here, but hey, I'm a horrible chess player, but someone who is concerned that there are other people out there who might really be affected in a bad way by these activities.


So I'm doing something about it.


Brian Joseph Johns


Credits and Citations:

The lady friend of mine who works as an admin for an analytics firm was played by Perplexity AI, who actually did the research and confirmed the scenarios I outlined. 

Citations:

Here are the cited sources with full URLs:



Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...


Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...


DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.


InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.


Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.


Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.


Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)


Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)


Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts


Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history


Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)


Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art



Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility


Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools


Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!


Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof


Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.


Soon, when people arrive in Canada for the first time, we'll be able to say: Welcome to Europe :-)



I am Brian Joseph Johns and this is Shhhh! Digital Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.com or https://www.shhhhdigital.ca in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701.



























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The Truth Is All There Is...




Everything else is an attempt to obscure it. 


The pleroma is not the true pleroma.


I was never really a pirate (one who copies software illegally), and not a pirate courier, the one who uploads uncracked software to servers where hackers break the copy protection, nor was I the one who download cracked software to redistribute it to other servers.


I was a coder of graphics demos, whose work got noticed by the membership of an Elite crew part of a legendary hacker group, and I was recruited (in the 1980s) purely for intros/demos, though I advocated both on my own, and on behalf of said legendary group for student pricing and free student versions of application software, so that low income students (like me at that time) could afford and acquire software education. Most low income students could barely afford a computer, never mind the a package like Autocad which in the late 1980s early 1990s held a price of many thousands of dollars. This was before student and educational pricing existed.


Generally, the only copied software I've ever been in possession of is that which came with the used computers I've purchased, and often went with the same computer when I sold it to someone else. Occasionally, if I needed a software that I'd purchased and lost or damaged the original copy, I'd download the disks or much later, the iso file to replace my installation media while still retaining my software license. So technically speaking, I was never really a pirate, but more an advocate of affordable pricing for students.


I am still an honorary member of said group, though rarely if ever communicate with others online in relation to this affiliation. Too many organized community crime networks spying on citizens illegally who would take that information and somehow try to profit by it, or use it maliciously and most citizens likely know exactly what I'm talking about. In the very building of my residence, just such an illegal surveillance network exists operated by people affiliated with organized crime, who use it most likely to protect their scheduled crack cocaine shipments into the building, and their sex trafficking network, things of their activity they regularly try to burden me with, while stealing the credit for my writing and work. They also do the same thing in connection with some homeless shelters, where they give people at those shelters the credit for my writing and work, while burdening me with their weight and then often harassing me about it to make it very heavy.


Thankfully, I do not reside in a homeless shelter nor do I work for the homeless shelter system, as it would probably be very difficult with all of the predatory groups operating at that level currently, never mind the ones coordinating to stalk people both offline and online who like the one in my building, have ties to organized crime that they use to stalk and harass their victims. 


Secondly, with regard to my love interest being Southeast Asian? There are people who knew me once upon a time who believed that my attraction to Southeast Asian women was because I was trying to take over the identity of a friend of mine (one whose name is John Penny). He was friends with a Japanese woman at one time, and so the membership of this stalking cult (who are most likely Tom Cruise obsessed fans) assumed that my attraction to Southeast Asian women was the result of my attempt to steal his identity, which it never was. 


I've always felt a strong attraction towards Southeast Asian women for as long as I can remember, and developed good friendships with a few when I was very young, though obviously friendships that preserved our innocence and even protected it. As I got older in life, I noticed more and more of an effort to steer me away from such friendships and force me in other directions, and that was most likely related to the presence of a collection of high control religious groups in my proximity who manipulated many aspects of my life right up until my late thirties without my knowing, including cutting off my income when I joined the military (QOR, a Canadian Reserve Airborne Regiment) hence my never finishing training or getting my jump wings. Cutting off and limiting my income when I joined martial arts the first time (hence my never continuing with that particular martial art until much later in my life). Similar manipulations occurred throughout my life every time I made a choice that went against the grain of their religions. They attempted to steer my interest away from European and Southeast Asian women, by introducing me to members of their approved cultures for my relationships, with their likely trying to herd me into their religious circle to live by their rules about intermingling. 


They still try force me over to the "brown" side or the "tan" side of the fence, which basically means that they attempt to enforce relationships that include only Africans or Caribbeans, despite my having being a Welsh descended person of light skin (their motivations are based upon skin colour and forcing me to be with someone on that basis rather than on the basis of the choice of my potential partner and I). 


They also often attempt to create the impression of my being "brown" or "tan" within that regard in order to replace my identity to replace my culture, so that I become a fuel source for them and nobody else (yep, they're a brown racist group alright). A very racist ideology that manipulate and interfere in their target's lives. This is the same ideology that attempts to steal my content and credit it to other people that have nothing to do with its creation.


Many of the people who seemingly came into my life via serendipity, were plants by the members of these religions, who were pruning me for membership amongst their numbers. Obviously at some point I took steps to distance myself from them, which was met with varied results, including their having stalked my older Chinese girlfriend for nearly four months unbeknownst to me back in 2006 (we parted ways for her protection), and then the same thing in 2010 when they stalked my Korean girlfriend at that time. 


Between those relationships, they attempted to create the impression that I used prostitutes and was involved in crack cocaine and other narcotics, as a means to discredit me and likely to prevent me from settling into a relationship with someone European or Southeast Asian as I stated and there seems to have been collusion from people I once trusted towards these ends, including attempts to associate me with cocaine or crack cocaine. In other words, trying to paint a very different picture of my being than is factual and most often in a way that it was destructive to my life and career (which it definitely was). I suspect a racist religion of some form (trying to force me in the "brown" direction), and possibly those who practice eugenics as well.


So, that's the truth and history of my situation while I'm working on growing and expanding Shhhh! Digital Media.


This predatory ideology are the source of most of my woes and the motivation for many of my rant posts. They're also the group that most often attempt to radicalize me towards anger or hostile reactions, as if they're addicted to it. I'm disgusted by women attracted to guys like that, especially those that believe that what they're doing is "craft" alchemy or something of that nature. Yay, what I've always wanted to be: a mean, knuckle dragging moron. Daddy, when I grow up can I be a mean, knuckle dragging moron? 


I prefer being intelligent, and being able to summon a fierce and potentially devastating willpower when I need it that is a force to be reckoned with, but never using it recklessly.


They likely attempted to swap my identity with that of my 350lbs neighbour, whose name is Marty. Apparently he's a Hell's Angel or has family that are Hell's Angels, and the abusive ideology in the building often swaps his identity and mine (though they do that between myself and many other people as well). So, I'm not Irish (Marty's Irish), and I'm not 350lbs, though I'd never make fun of anyone over their health issues or their weight. I'm about 175lbs and 6 feet tall, and fairly fit for my age.


Regardless, after years of being forced to carry the weight of "brown" via a cult that operates via colour symbolism of brown black (brown secrets), I'm dumping it all as its not mine and never was. 


Apparently that's the nature of this cult. To force that kind of weight upon someone and then to make it very heavy for them. However, it isn't mine anymore and never really was. Lets just put it where everyone has access to it and see where that goes when everyone else knows their secrets.


I'm still Canadian and living in Canada. I've never lived anywhere else.


I'm not Irish, nor am I Scottish, nor am I transgender, nor am I homosexual, but I support LGBTQ2 rights, nor do I play guitar and I've never owned a guitar in my life. I grew up at 30 Lisburn Crescent from the age of 7 years old, just to verify my exact identity. We lived several other places before that, but I'll keep those to myself. I don't have a brown fetish and never have. My own love interest is Southeast Asian. Nobody is controlling me or remotely controlling me.


I am not remembering someone else's history (like that of Steve Vitale), as my two most recent girlfriends were Chinese and Korean, though this is a fact that a racist group has been trying to erase about my history. They are a cult that believe that if you speak of things related to your history, you lose them and they go to someone else, which is complete nonsense. Not only that but they're organized crime, and attempting to give the credit for my work to other people.


No, I don't use cocaine or crack cocaine and I have never been involved in sex trafficking in my life and my name isn't Sam. You'll find that organized crime often attempts to dump its responsibility for sex trafficking and narcotics onto substitutes, and I'm not one to put up with that sort of thing at all, no matter who is doing the dumping.


I'm completely an atheist now and do not believe in any religion whatsoever. Perhaps secular is the best way to describe me and no, I'm not on the blue team or the brown team. I'm not Polish. I'm not Italian, and my name isn't Mario, a Calabrese Italian poet who had kidney surgery decades ago.


This is going to get legal very soon, so buckle up. 






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Wednesday, March 18, 2026

The Hand That Feeds: Weaponized Suggestion Feeds


 

Biomagnetism And Hormones


First of all, I am not possessed by anyone or being remotely controlled either. I never was and never will be not to mention I am not a member of any religion or ideology that believes such nonsense. Abusive ideological groups have a number of ways to manipulate people that are all based upon smoke and mirrors, with the most aggressive and secretive of them being people who've practiced attuning their biomagnetic field in such a way that it can have both positive and negative effects upon another person's nervous system and homeostasis. Homeostasis refers to the balance of hormonal chemistry in a person's body that affects their mood and cognition. How a person perceives the world around them, and if that chemistry is out of whack, it can skew a person's perception of the world, and make them vulnerable to reaction or even fight or flight syndrome. 


I've been writing about this kind of thing for years and have invested countless hours researching and investigating it, though most of my posts including this knowledge have been deleted by me as that information often appeared in one of the rants I chose to delete. However, there is a good record of it in my Butterfly Dragon storyline of The Two Butterflies (which was written by me while operating under the fav.inbox@gmail.com account which is my personal email). There are predatory groups that exist that actually use biomagnetism as a method to attack their enemies and of those groups, there's an even smaller percentage who utilize these methods while under the influence of narcotics such as crack cocaine or methamphetamine to do so. What that translates to is that being attacked in that manner would affect the hormones in your body so that your hormonal balance was similar to that of someone under the influence of such narcotics. The members of these cults that are aware of this refer to it as "blue" or being "blue", and when someone is under that influence, it has become a means to write off anything they reveal about the people attacking them. Its a method of silencing whistle blowers with regard to this activity and its the social architecture of complete morons and idiots bent on destroying society rather than helping it or enlightening others.


The reference to the colour blue comes from the way that Police and criminal investigators use to determine the likelihood of a substance being cocaine, which shows up and glows blue while placed under ultraviolet light. Hence, Blue is word that is used to describe a form of mania that arises when people who use crack cocaine and are part of an ideological group who practice collective biomagnetism as a means to affect and attack others, direct such an attack against a person in their awareness and who lives relatively near them. In the communities where this is commonplace, that is generally how they refer to it, and they use these methods to manufacture and silence whistleblowers by discrediting them.


Online Connection


Given my recent rant, I just wanted to share some insight that might help make others aware of just how much their perception and perspective can be skewed by online sources that offer a computer suggested feed of content (most all of which is often not made by the service itself but its users), and how that content can be commandeered to twist your perception of things and even manipulate how and what you perceive of content producers, and others such as celebrities that appear in many of the media formats you receive that way.


This can be wielded psychologically against you by malicious parties, some of whom might be part of ideological groups acting against your interests, either for personal reasons, or simply out of their own malice and that some of these groups can have members who are employed in system admin positions at such online services, and who can manipulate or affect the logic that is employed to select the suggested content per user, for specific users. People that might be subject to and targeted by this activity definitely include influencers, but could also be directed more generally at a wider audience. Hence, insiders working at such companies can commandeer the suggested content feed that users receive, and use it to both positive or negative results that target the user of that feed, both personally using personal information about them (especially their secrets), and psychologically. The ideological groups that do this are very systematic and employ coordinated techniques to achieve this.


This sort of thing is a far cry from being verbally harassed by groups in person, which takes a lot of strength and resilience to withstand the negative effects of such treatment, but it is traceable and there's evidence, so most people who take part in such activity tend to do it discretely and on the occasions where they step over that line, that leaves an audit trail for criminal investigators, though given the fact that it is so common these days, it is highly unlikely that investigators will ever be able to handle individual cases in a timely manner. Its very clear cut and difficult to disprove as well which works in the advantage of a victim of this activity, however, your hostile reactions to it can be used in the same way by people harassing you, so be mindful. It takes a different kind of strength to deal with hostility of that nature, and most of the people who attack others in that way are cowardly and of little honour or respect for peace and human life.


Suggested Content Feed


Celebrities are rarely directly involved in how their content and appearances are used. Their images, and the video clips in which they're present, are numerous and used by just as many different sources and to different ends, and this is the same or similar with influencers, and others who are visible online and well known. Their image can be used in numerous ways and they are never fully aware of all of the places that it ends up or a part of the artificial narrative that can be created using their image.


Enter: the suggested content feed. Several online content sources such as YouTube (perhaps the most notable) present their content to the users via a feed of suggestions based upon what they're viewed that is of interest to them. The more you watch a particular kind of video, the more you'll get suggestions of videos like that, as well as other videos that are frequently watched by those who like the same kind of videos. This is added to an algorithm that choose content based upon your analytics data from other sources (such as your web browsing activity), and after all of these factors are taken into consideration (along with an AI evaluated and a random element), your content is suggested to you in a feed format that can be scrolled through to see new suggestions. To most users, this feed will seem to be random and related generally to their interests according to the specifications I gave above, but for some, it might have more specific contexts, that seems to target personal aspects about their life.


In such a case, there can generally be two possibilities when that occurs. The first and most convenient way to write it off, is that its an observation selection effect or anthropic bias. The reason that it stands out to you is because your mind is purposely sensitive to extrapolating meaning that is specific to you, from seemingly random content, meaning that you'll have a bias that sometimes can reach and over extend itself towards an implied meaning you're deriving from the content feed, though there is a statistical limit to how often this sort of analysis can be employed to explain such a phenomenon, before it exceeds statistical probability.


The second possibility is that an ideological group has members employed at the online service that you're using, who are twisting the selection algorithm as a means to purposely turn screws in your head, and that is not beyond the realm of possibility, and in all likelihood in many cases, especially those involving popular influencers and those who attract a lot of attention online, is very reasonable to assume that sort of thing might be happening when one notices an inordinate amount of coincidences in the suggestion feed that seem to be sculpting a targeted message towards you. This can both be used to positive and negative effect. However, once you're aware of this, it loses its power over you exponentially.


My concern though is for younger and older people, who don't understand how the underlying technology can be commandeered to achieve such a thing, and hence who can be manipulated and twisted to the point of emotional trauma and the risk of other forms of harmful manipulation that might lead to self harm. 


In the news more and more often, there have been reports of people employed at such services who have after extensive investigations been found to be accessing and sharing their users' information with others online and outside of their workplace. There have also been instances found where this sort of manipulation has been detected in the news feeds of celebrities and politicians and this was one of the  aspects with regard to cases directed against Facebook (which employs a suggested content feed), where it appeared that this sort of technology could be used to influence United States (and presumably those of other countries') voters. I'm telling you this as a Canadian by the way, and the concern was that this sort of technology can be used to manipulate voters without their even knowing, and it could happen anywhere. The same principle applies for any suggested content feed, and ideological groups looking to manipulate certain people are behind much of this activity, and that is becoming more and more apparent as investigations uncover such activity.


To finish the human part of this article, I'd like to emphasize the fact that this is most certainly already happening and in the hands of malicious ideologies and that this might be behind the recent risks that have been discussed in the news and via other online sources. Our awareness of this possibility serves to insulate us from it.


Once again, this same activity could be used to silence whistleblowers and dissenters who expose activities like what I'm experiencing whereby there are groups that take the credit for my content, while disregarding my identity and existence (as if I'm a ghost). And that aspect seems to be very criminal and very real to the point of corruption and the organized crime and ideology protecting it.


I will continue this article with an editorial that was produced by AI according to my specifications, as the AI was able to research and compile a complete article with research citations backing up many of the claims I'm making and indicating the fact that legally, we're still in infancy when it comes to dealing with such problems.



An article by Perplexity AI and Brian Joseph Johns

When Insiders Weaponize the Algorithm: The Hidden Hands Behind Your Feed


Algorithmic feeds are powerful amplifiers, but the deepest danger is not the code itself; it is how determined insiders and outside recruiters can bend that code toward quiet, targeted psychological operations against unsuspecting users. The same systems that can help people discover useful content can, in the wrong hands, become precision tools for harassment, radicalization, or the erasure of inconvenient voices.


Modern platforms already know that ranking algorithms can shift what we believe and prioritize. A recent field experiment on X (formerly Twitter) showed that turning on its algorithmic “For You” feed increased the share of conservative political content people saw and nudged their policy priorities in a more conservative direction over just seven weeks. Large election‑period experiments on Facebook and Instagram similarly show that small changes in how content is ordered can substantially change what political information users encounter, even when their formal party identity does not flip overnight. These are platform‑sanctioned experiments, run at scale, that demonstrate a hard truth: whoever controls the knobs on the feed controls the flow of political reality for millions of people.


Crucially, this influence does not require editing anyone’s vote or hacking a database; it only requires shifting the probabilities of what appears at the top of the screen. By quietly boosting posts from some actors and demoting others, a feed can make certain movements feel energetic and ubiquitous while their opponents look marginal, toxic, or strangely absent. Users experience this not as “manipulation,” but as “what my friends are talking about” or “what’s trending now,” never seeing the counterfactual world where different choices were made.


Security research is increasingly blunt about insider threats: real organizations are seeing employees approached or recruited by outside attackers, not just for money but for political or ideological motives. Surveys of security professionals report that a significant fraction have seen employees contacted to assist in attacks, including ransomware and data exfiltration, and guidance from national cyber agencies explicitly notes that malicious insiders may knowingly abuse their access to cause harm. Insider‑threat frameworks now talk about skills, motives, and opportunities: a technically capable employee who believes the platform is morally corrupt or politically dangerous suddenly looks like a prime candidate for quiet sabotage or “course correction.”


We already have concrete examples of staff abusing privileged tools on major platforms. Facebook, for example, has investigated an employee accused of using internal admin systems to stalk women, exploiting data he could see but ordinary users could not. Security case‑studies describe administrators who used elevated access to spy on colleagues, steal sensitive information, or retaliate against perceived enemies. These incidents are often treated as isolated misconduct, but they prove a structural point: once someone is inside the perimeter with the right privileges, the difference between “routine work” and “targeted abuse” is often just intent.


Combine what we know, and a disturbing, yet technically mundane, scenario emerges. An ideological group decides that the most efficient “psychological operation” is not mass propaganda from the outside, but subtle control from the inside. Instead of just buying ads or running troll farms, it encourages or plants sympathizers into the trust‑and‑safety, data science, or recommender‑engineering teams of one or more platforms. These are precisely the roles that can adjust ranking parameters, define “quality,” tweak toxicity thresholds, and create or override internal labels that determine which posts are boosted, throttled, or flagged.


From there, the operation does not need a cartoonishly obvious “ban my enemies” button. It only needs to re‑weight certain engagement signals or topic scores so that content from rival figures is slightly more likely to be shown in hostile contexts, or more likely to be buried below emotionally charged replies. It can quietly add or adjust internal tags that mark specific communities, hashtags, or domains as “borderline,” “low quality,” or “safety sensitive,” making their posts less likely to reach the top of feeds or to be recommended to new audiences. And it can tune the friend‑ or page‑recommendation system so that people loosely adjacent to the group’s ideology are steered into ever denser networks of allied accounts, while critics are surrounded by content that makes them look unhinged, hateful, or irrelevant.


To the everyday user – or even to a popular influencer – this does not look like an “attack.” It looks like a slow, inexplicable shift: old followers stop seeing their posts, replies become more hostile, growth stalls, and their ideological opponents seem strangely boosted by the algorithm. Targets may suspect shadow‑banning, but without access to internal logs and parameter histories, they cannot prove that a particular human hand nudged the dials.


The danger for ordinary users is not just large‑scale political steering; it is micro‑targeted harm. Because modern recommendation systems rely on detailed behavioral profiles and graph data, an insider with the right access can quietly focus tampering on specific individuals or small clusters (for example, women activists, minority journalists, whistleblowers) by adjusting how often their content is shown and to whom. They can focus on vulnerable users who are already under stress, by promoting more extreme, self‑harming, or rage‑inducing material into their feeds, exploiting known patterns where variable rewards and sensational content keep people hooked. They can target social bridges – those users who connect different communities – by making them appear more volatile or less trustworthy, thereby fraying the edges where dialogue might otherwise cross ideological lines.


None of this requires breaking the recommendation engine; it only requires repurposing it. Algorithmic systems that are good at maximizing engagement and keeping people on the platform are, by design, good at finding what will grab a specific person’s attention or anxiety. In a health‑oriented context, this could mean nudging users toward more exercise videos; in a malicious context, it could mean surfacing more humiliation, outrage, or fear for a chosen set of names.


It is tempting to say “algorithms are to blame,” but that lets human decision‑makers off the hook. The same research that shows feeds can sway political attitudes and behaviors also shows that these systems are adjustable: we can turn features on and off, tighten or loosen ranking rules, and offer non‑profiling alternatives. Regulatory studies in Europe note that platforms often choose manipulative defaults and overwhelming interfaces, not because they must, but because these designs maximize growth and data extraction. That is a business decision, not a technological inevitability.


Insider‑threat research reaches a parallel conclusion: technology provides the means, but motives and oversight determine whether those means are used responsibly. Organizations that treat political neutrality and feed integrity as afterthoughts, or that centralize immense power in small, poorly monitored teams, are effectively trusting that no one with strong ideological commitments will ever abuse their role. That is not a security model; it is wishful thinking.


In other words, recommendation engines are scalpels: they can heal or harm with great precision. The risk is not the existence of the scalpel, but the absence of safeguards on who wields it, under what supervision, and with what accountability when things go wrong.


If we take the possibility of ideological insider psyops seriously, several responses become obvious. Platforms need to treat feed‑ranking logic and internal override tools as critical infrastructure, with strong access controls, four‑eyes changes, and auditable logs for every parameter tweak that can affect political or sensitive content. External researchers and regulators need more visibility into how ranking systems behave around elections and other high‑stakes events, including independent experiments like those already done on X, Facebook, and Instagram. Users deserve meaningful options: genuinely accessible non‑profiling feeds, clear labels when content is boosted or throttled, and explanations of why they are seeing particular posts.


None of these measures will eliminate the risk that a motivated insider might try to twist the system to hurt enemies or advance a cause. But they make it harder to act in total secrecy and easier to detect patterns that deviate from declared policies. They also shift the narrative away from blaming “the algorithm” and toward examining the people and institutions that design, deploy, and oversee these tools.


The technology, in other words, is a mirror: it reflects the incentives and ethics of those who control it. The real danger is not that feeds can be manipulated, but that we continue to build systems where such manipulation is easy, profitable, and largely invisible – and then feign surprise when bad actors step through the door we left open.

Citations:




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