23 Lauren Edmonds, “Jeffree Star Said Slaughtering His Yaks Is the ‘Wyoming Way’ and Showed a Group of Animals Scheduled to Be Killed the Next Day,” Insider, June 7, 2022, https://www.insider.com/jeffree-star-defends-killing-yaks-at-ranch-wyoming-way-2022-6.
24 Sapna Maheshwari, “Are You Ready for the NanoInfluencers?” New York Times, November 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/business/media/nanoinfluencers-instagram-influencers.html.
25 For an interview-rich examination of how influencers themselves describe their skills, goals, monetization strategies, and relationship to their audience, see Emily Hund, The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023).
26 For an extended examination of ways in which bias manifests in search engines, see Safiya Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: NYU Press, 2018).
27 For more on the relationship between search queries, rare keywords or phrases, and online rabbit holes, see Michael Golebiewski and danah boyd, “Data Voids,” Data & Society, October 29, 2019, https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids; Francesca Tripodi, “Searching for Alternative Facts,” Data & Society, May 16, 2018, https://datasociety.net/library/searching-for-alternative-facts; Ronald E. Robertson et al., “Identifying Search Directives on Social Media,” Journal of Online Trust & Safety, September 21, 2023, https://tsjournal.org/index.php/jots/article/view/133.
28 Cassidy George, “How Charli D’Amelio Became the Face of TikTok,” New Yorker, September 5, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/how-charli-damelio-became-the-face-of-tiktok.
29 When Charli D’Amelio reached one hundred million followers, TikTok wrote a blog post congratulating her. “Congratulations Charli for 100M Followers, Paving the Way for Creators Everywhere,” TikTok, November 22, 2020, https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/congratulations-charli-damelio-for-100-million-followers-paving-the-way-for-creators-everywhere. Her remarkable success has been analyzed in great detail, as people attempt to understand how her content and TikTok’s For You algorithm intersect. One such video, by “Richard the YouTube Strategist,” breaks down the early posts by D’Amelio and charts which helped her take off. “How Charli d’Amelio Became Famous,” video posted to YouTube by Richard the Youtube strategist, May 7, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks8kpjhVxVE.
30 Steven Levy, “The Untold History of Facebook’s Most Controversial Growth Tool,” Medium, February 25, 2020, https://marker.medium.com/the-untold-history-of-facebooks-most-controversial-growth-tool-2ea3bfeaaa66.
31 Kashmir Hill, “How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You’ve Ever Met,” Gizmodo, November 7, 2017, https://gizmodo.com/how-facebook-figures-out-everyone-youve-ever-met-1819822691.
32 Kashmir Hill, “Facebook Recommended That This Psychiatrist’s Patients Friend Each Other,” Splinter, August 29, 2016, https://splinternews.com/facebook-recommended-that-this-psychiatrists-patients-f-1793861472.
33 Anil Dash, “Nobody Has a Million Twitter Followers,” Anil Dash, January 5, 2010, https://www.anildash.com/2010/01/05/nobody_has_a_million_twitter_followers.
34 Julia Zappei, “Twitter Scrapping Its Suggested User List,” NBC News, November 16, 2009, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna33964694.
35 Gerrick De Vynck, “High-Profile Republicans Gain Followers in First Weeks of Musk’s Reign,” Washington Post, November 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/27/musk-followers-bernie-cruz.
36 J. M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan, “The ISIS Twitter Census: Defining and Describing the Population of ISIS Supporters on Twitter,” Brookings, March 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/isis_twitter_census_berger_morgan.pdf.
37 Renée DiResta, “Social Network Algorithms Are Distorting Reality by Boosting Conspiracy Theories,” Fast Company, May 11, 2016, https://www.fastcompany.com/3059742/social-network-algorithms-are-distorting-reality-by-boosting-conspiracy-theories.
38 Anna Merlan, “The Conspiracy Singularity Has Arrived,” Vice, July 17, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gz53/the-conspiracy-singularity-has-arrived.
39 Jeff Horwitz and Katherine Blunt, “Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/instagram-vast-pedophile-network-4ab7189.
40 Renée DiResta, “Online Conspiracy Groups Are a Lot Like Cults,” Wired, November 13, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/online-conspiracy-groups-qanon-cults.
41 With 272,000 members as of December 11, 2023. “QAnonCasualties Subreddit,” Reddit, accessed December 11, 2023, https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties.
42 Brandy Zadrozny, “On Facebook, Anti-vaxxers Urged a Mom Not to Give Her Son Tamiflu. He Later Died,” NBC News, February 7, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-anti-vaxxers-pushed-mom-not-give-her-son-tamiflu-n1131936.
