Digital Anarchy, Cybernetics, and the Politics of Feedback

By Repro Uncensored and Octree

Algorithms and the Myth of Neutrality

Algorithms are often described as neutral systems that organize information and determine what is seen, amplified, or erased. In reality, they are deeply political. They encode values, assumptions, and power relations that shape how knowledge circulates and how people are positioned within digital systems.

Early cybernetics, developed by thinkers such as Norbert Wiener and later expanded by Heinz von Foerster, approached systems not as fixed mechanisms but as processes that learn through feedback. The central concern was not optimization, but understanding how systems adapt in response to their own behavior.

If behavior alters the system, then no form of governance can claim neutrality. Anyone who designs, measures, or interprets a system participates in shaping its outcomes. Technical decisions are never merely technical.

Cybernetics and the Question of Power

For von Foerster, the observer is always part of the system being observed. This insight aligns cybernetics with anarchist traditions that question imposed authority and emphasize shared responsibility.

Rather than assuming that order must come from hierarchy, this perspective asks how coordination can emerge through collective participation. Power is not eliminated, but made visible and open to challenge.

From this view, systems are not fixed structures but ongoing processes. Rules, metrics, and protocols are political choices that shape whose knowledge counts and whose voices are heard.

Feedback as a Political Relation

Feedback is often framed as a technical mechanism for improvement. In practice, it is a site of power.

In many digital environments, feedback flows in one direction. Data is extracted, interpreted elsewhere, and used to guide behavior without transparency or consent. In these contexts, feedback functions as a form of governance.

A different approach treats feedback as a collective process. It asks who defines what counts as a signal, who interprets it, and who has the authority to act. When feedback is shared and revisable, it becomes a tool for collective learning rather than control.

Digital Anarchy in Practice

Digital anarchy does not mean disorder. It names a refusal of unaccountable authority and a commitment to shared responsibility.

In practice, this means treating systems as provisional. When patterns of exclusion or imbalance appear, they are understood as information rather than failure. Reflection replaces enforcement. Adjustment replaces punishment.

This approach prioritizes transparency over efficiency and shared understanding over optimization. It recognizes that systems must remain open to revision if they are to serve those within them.

Repro Uncensored and Collective Inquiry

The work of Repro Uncensored operates within this framework. It approaches digital infrastructures as political environments that shape visibility, legitimacy, and access.

Rather than treating moderation or platform governance as technical problems, the project examines how power circulates through digital systems and how communities can intervene. Feedback becomes a means of collective inquiry rather than a mechanism of control.

Through documentation, reflection, and shared analysis, Repro Uncensored seeks to make these dynamics visible and contestable.

Toward a Politics of Shared Responsibility

Digital anarchy, in this sense, is not the absence of structure but the refusal of unaccountable authority. It insists that those affected by systems must have the ability to question, reshape, and govern them.

The politics of feedback is therefore about who decides, who benefits, and who bears the consequences of technological systems. It is an invitation to treat digital infrastructures not as fixed realities but as sites of collective responsibility and possibility.

References and Influences

• Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press.

• Von Foerster, Heinz. Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition.

• Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology.

• Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality.

• Suchman, Lucy. Plans and Situated Actions.

• Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.”

• Benjamin, Ruha. Race After Technology.

• Tufekci, Zeynep. Twitter and Tear Gas.