Weaponized flux: Reflexive control and the struggle against digital authoritarianism
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Digital authoritarianism hinges on algorithmic regimes that turn instability into controlled flux: perpetual recategorization that steers behavior and fuels predictive governance. Paradoxically, these same reflexive loops contain their own undoing: when flooded with structured, self-referential contradictions, adaptive classifiers collapse into recursive failure. This essay unpacks the algebraic mechanics of Lefebvre's reflexive control theory and demonstrates how its processes can be repurposed as a counter-flux insurgency, collapsing predictive governance from within by targeting its classification loops rather than merely injecting noise. Building on Cheney-Lippold's work on algorithmic governance, we argue that flux here is harnessed, rather than resisted, to weaponize uncertainty, shape predictable reactions, consolidate power, and ultimately enable digital authoritarian governance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.026 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.038 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".