Algorithmic collective action (opens in new tab)

Figure 1 Coalition game and collective action problems, played between people and algorithms. 1 Collective action against a model A collective of users pools their data and coordinates how each member modifies it, to push a platform’s deployed learning algorithm where the collective wants it (Hardt et al. 2024). Even a tiny fractional collective can exert outsized control over what the model learns, because the firm keeps retraining on data the collective has shaped. The reciprocal quantity i...