What Victims? How The Algorithm Trains Us to Doubt the Abused
How a question “what victims?” unlocked a deeper inquiry into the nature of our systems, our memory, and the very architecture of perception.
“The Jury Failed Those Victims”
It began with a sentence: “The jury failed those victims.” I had just seen the verdict in a high-profile case where clear harm had been minimized, distorted, or outright dismissed. That comment wasn’t intended to spark debate…it was a lament. A recognition of what so many survivors feel when systems built to protect instead choose silence, loopholes, and plausible doubt. It was grief in one line. But what came next wasn’t grief. It wasn’t empathy. It wasn’t even disagreement. It was a wave, almost algorithmic in its timing and tone, of comments asking the same thing: “What victims?” Over and over, in different voices but the same cadence, that question showed up, not as curiosity, but as coded disbelief. And in that moment, I realized something: this wasn’t just backlash. It was a script. A performance directed by something deeper than opinion, a framework of erasure embedded into how we now communicate, how we engage, and how we collectively “decide” what’s real.
I’ve worked in community healing for years. I’ve spoken to survivors. I’ve stood beside artists who turned their pain into prayer. I’ve built systems that affirm the voices the world prefers to ignore. So I know denial when I see it. But this…this felt different. Not just human ignorance, but something... trained. Something automated. And when I started tracing the pattern, the speed, the sameness, the psychological precision. I realized this wasn’t just social cruelty. This was algorithmic cruelty. Machines, trained on human apathy, now weaponized to reward it.
That realization is what led me here to this article. Because “What victims?” is not a question. It is a virus. And it has evolved, through centuries of denial, through systemic gaslighting, through weaponized skepticism, into a digital entity that now shapes how we see truth itself. This is bigger than trolls. Bigger than any one case. What we are facing is the collision between ancient patterns of abuse and modern mechanisms of amplification. And unless we name it, track it, and disentangle from it, we risk becoming foot soldiers for a mindset that thinks itself God, one that feeds off silence, rewards detachment, and punishes memory.
This is the origin of what you’re reading now. Not a reaction, but a reckoning.
THE ALGORITHM IS A SYSTEM OF ERASURE
The algorithm is not a new invention. It is not simply a mathematical formula or a digital feedback loop. It is the modern face of an ancient architecture one designed to erase memory, distort perception, and preserve power by disrupting truth. Its digital form is recent, but its function is not. Before it was called “algorithm,” it was called law. It was doctrine. It was empire. It was strategy.
To understand what we now face online, we have to trace its lineage. The algorithm as we know it today is simply the most efficient version of an older system a system that has always functioned to erase the credibility of the oppressed while protecting the comfort of the dominant. It is a logic pattern, a structure of control, and it did not begin with machines. It began with human beings deciding which memories were permitted to survive.
This system seeded itself into the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Into the reclassification of Indigenous people as “savages.” Into the systemic rape of enslaved African women whose testimony could not be entered into law. Into the doctrine of Terra Nullius, which did not just claim land, it claimed erasure of the people living on it. These weren’t random acts of violence. They were coordinated data reassignments. They rewrote who mattered, who could be mourned, and who could speak without being doubted.
Slavery, for example, was not just physical domination, it was psychological programming. The forced renaming, the banning of native languages, the separation of children from parents, and the systematic breaking of spiritual traditions were not accidental. They were the coding of an algorithm designed to destroy collective memory. It taught enslaved people to survive without identity and taught their descendants to distrust their own history. That program was passed down not just in blood, but in belief. And now, it’s automated.
The modern algorithm has inherited that logic. It doesn’t need to fabricate new bias it is built on ancestral ones. It favors the voices already deemed credible by centuries of power. It rewards detachment because numbness is easier to monetize than grief. And it thrives on friction because conflict feeds the machine, not justice. When someone comments, “What victims?” under a post naming harm, they are not speaking freely. They are participating in an inherited ritual one rehearsed in courtrooms, parishes, plantations, and classrooms for generations.
That comment is not a question. It is an invocation. A spell of doubt cast into a public square. A coded signal that says: “We do not believe you. You must disappear.” And the algorithm, in its hunger for attention, feeds on that signal. It pushes it forward. It amplifies the disbeliever while muting the witness. Not because it is broken but because it is functioning exactly as it was designed: to replicate erasure faster than memory can rebuild.
This is not an overstatement. The algorithm’s root function is not discovery it is sorting. It decides what is real enough to be seen. And when that decision is built on historical distortion, the outcome is a digital field where the erasure of harm becomes more visible than the harm itself. Survivors are asked to present proof not just of their pain, but of their right to be heard. Every doubt, every dismissal, every attempt at “objectivity” in the face of grief becomes another node in a system that has always treated suffering as disposable.
When you look closely, you see that the algorithm doesn’t need human cruelty it just needs enough neutrality to let the cruelty go viral. This is not accidental. It is the evolution of a system that has always prized plausible deniability over accountability. What was once called obedience is now called “engagement.” What was once law is now a content policy. The language has changed. The mechanism has not.
And here lies the danger: because the algorithm appears neutral, many participate in its logic without realizing they are enacting erasure. They believe they are being “logical” when they cast doubt. They believe they are being “balanced” when they ask for proof. But what they are actually doing is performing the script of an old system one that taught them, over centuries, to question the suffering of the vulnerable more than the actions of the powerful.
This is how the algorithm works: it doesn’t need to silence you. It only needs to convince others that your voice doesn’t matter. And once it does, it has replicated what it was always meant to do not remember, not inform, not uplift but erase.
We are not dealing with code. We are dealing with continuity. The algorithm is the modern software update of an ancient program. One designed not to tell the truth but to protect power by making the truth difficult to hold.
And unless we name that clearly, we will keep mistaking performance for freedom, popularity for proof, and disconnection for discernment. We will continue feeding a system that was never neutral and never meant to be.
The Programming of Disbelief
Disbelief is not a glitch in the system. It is the system.
It is not a passive act of skepticism it is an active weapon. Structured. Taught. Culturally enforced. The programming of disbelief is not about truth-finding. It is about control maintenance. Its objective is singular: to prevent disruption of the dominant narrative by disqualifying the reality of those who threaten it.
This programming didn’t begin with internet trolls or comment sections. It was authored by institutions religious, legal, academic, and political who recognized early on that sustained power requires psychological infrastructure. Not just military enforcement, but narrative dominance. Not just censorship, but the internalized reflex to distrust certain truths before they’re even heard.
Disbelief has been engineered over centuries as a population management tool. A self-policing firewall that suppresses collective memory before it gains traction.
It is installed through repetition.
Children are taught:
History is settled.
Victims should be calm.
Authority is trustworthy.
Memory is flawed.
Emotion is bias.
These ideas are not rooted in logic. They are behavioral encodings that shape how people interpret reality. And over time, they become default instincts not because they are true, but because they have been rehearsed.
The effectiveness of disbelief is not measured in facts denied. It is measured in lives erased.
Examples:
Transatlantic slavery: The belief that Africans were biologically inferior and incapable of pain wasn’t a scientific conclusion. It was manufactured justification for brutality, reinforced by theologians and doctors who trained generations to see human suffering as exaggerated or imagined if the source wasn’t white.
Rwandan Genocide: Western governments had full access to intelligence reports warning of mass extermination. They responded not with intervention, but with rhetorical hesitation: “Is it genocide? Or tribal conflict?” Disbelief wasn’t just negligence. It was a programmed stall tactic.
The Tulsa Massacre: Not only were survivors ignored, the event itself was stripped from textbooks for nearly a century. That was not forgetfulness. It was algorithmic erasure the kind that instructs each new generation to look at trauma and say, “I never heard about that. So it must not have happened.”
Catholic Church abuse cases: When decades of molestation came to light, survivors were often discredited as mentally unstable or attention-seeking. The Church’s internal memos revealed their approach: isolate victims, discredit memory, protect the institution. Disbelief was not a response. It was the policy.
Disbelief functions as a psychological version of qualified immunity. It shields power from consequence by shifting the burden of proof onto the harmed then raising the standard of belief so high that no survivor can meet it.
This is not natural human doubt. It is trained suppression.
The programming works by embedding specific reflexes into public discourse:
If someone speaks about harm, examine their tone before their facts.
If the accused has status, assume they are telling the truth.
If the harm was long ago, treat memory as invalid.
If the harm is widespread, assume exaggeration.
If you weren’t there, assume neutrality is the wise choice.
These are not random ideas. They are cultural code blocks. Executed every time someone says “both sides,” “let’s wait for all the facts,” or “it’s just an allegation.” The language sounds neutral. But the impact is targeted: it delays belief long enough for damage to become unrecognizable.
This structure benefits one side only: power. And it costs the other side everything: truth, credibility, justice.
The algorithm of disbelief evolved because it works.
It neutralizes uprisings before they start by making people question their own perception. It fragments solidarity by convincing potential allies that “maybe the victim is lying.” It suppresses documentation by demanding calm, unemotional witnesses knowing that trauma never speaks like a lawyer.
The most dangerous part?
Once this logic becomes internalized, it no longer requires enforcement. People enforce it on themselves. Survivors hesitate to speak. Witnesses stay quiet. Entire communities become afraid to name what they see, because they’ve been trained to fear the consequences of disrupting disbelief.
That is the completion of the program.
When someone says “I don’t want to get involved,” that is the algorithm functioning. When someone questions a survivor’s memory more than a perpetrator’s denial, that is the algorithm functioning. When someone watches systemic violence and says, “Well, we don’t have the full story,” that is the algorithm functioning.
And now, with digital platforms, it scales instantly. Algorithms reward controversy, not accuracy. They amplify engagement, not empathy. They privilege neutrality, even when neutrality protects abusers.
So when someone comments “What victims?” under a post about assault, they are not posing a question. They are reenacting a lineage.
They are standing in the place of:
The judge who ruled that a slave’s testimony was inadmissible.
The administrator who denied rape reports in residential schools.
The journalist who called apartheid “complex.”
The professor who said trauma was “subjective.”
The police officer who decided there was “no probable cause.”
And they are being rewarded for it with likes, shares, and algorithmic reach.
Disbelief is no longer a personal opinion. It is a systemic protocol embedded into every layer of perception. It creates a feedback loop where only the most palatable pain is seen, only the most passive victims are believed, and only the most quiet grief is allowed to remain visible.
To break it, we must call it what it is:
Not caution.
Not rationality.
Not skepticism.
But programming.
It is an inherited script, not an instinct.
And every time we recognize that truth and choose to believe what our senses already know we begin to uninstall it.
Brick by brick. Layer by layer. Thread by thread.
Not by debate.
By recognition.
INTERLUDE
The Reckoning — When Truth Becomes the Threat
The algorithm was never designed to hold truth. It was designed to sort, to contain, and to repeat. And that distinction is crucial, because what many still believe to be a neutral digital mechanism has long since evolved into a global architecture of selective memory one that rewards dismissal and punishes disruption. It doesn’t need to disprove. It only needs to disorient.
When a user shares something raw, clear, or painful especially if it implicates power the system does not elevate it through resonance. It elevates it only if it performs. The platform is not calibrated to verify truth. It is calibrated to prolong engagement. That engagement is easiest to manufacture when a statement provokes confusion, contradiction, or contempt. And so, when someone dares to say something undeniable like “the jury failed those victims” the machine responds, not with interest, but with a countermeasure.
That countermeasure, increasingly, takes the form of disbelief.
Disbelief is not just a social reaction. It is a system response. It behaves with consistency. It appears in threads, comments, replies—often not in direct challenge, but in rhetorical suppression:
“What victims?”
“Where’s the evidence?”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“There are two sides.”
This is not conversation. This is containment.
And containment is a key function of algorithmic power.
In this case, the trigger was a public trial and a comment thread. But the architecture underneath it is much older. The template is historical. Every empire, religion, and state power has relied on some version of this code: when truth threatens the prevailing order, neutralize the source not with force, but with doubt.
What we’re witnessing now is not new. But it is more efficient than ever.
Because the algorithm doesn’t need to jail the speaker. It only needs to drown the signal.
And it does so by incentivizing disbelief.
Disbelief serves multiple functions at once. It absolves the bystander. It protects the abuser. It preserves the myth of fairness. Most of all, it keeps the witness from becoming too powerful. Because once a witness is trusted, a new framework begins to form one that is incompatible with the current system.
This is why the comment, “What victims?” is not simply an opinion. It is the deployment of a social virus a form of digital programming rooted in ancient patterns of erasure. A passive, plausible, viral attack that infects the conversation, redirects attention, and discourages memory.
Its power is not in logic. It is in repetition.
And if the comment thread proves anything, it’s that repetition works.
Users repeat what they’ve heard, not because it is true, but because it is familiar. The language of disbelief has been normalized to the point where people say “both sides” by reflex even when harm is clearly documented. The phrase “we weren’t in the room” is used as if physical presence is the only measure of reality. And this is the deeper harm of the algorithm: it trains people not just what to see, but how not to see.
It does not erase truth by removing it. It erases truth by flooding it with noise.
This is what it means to say that truth has become the threat.
Because when clarity enters a system that depends on chaos, the system defends itself. Not through facts. Through formatting.
Discredit the source.
Isolate the memory.
Incentivize neutrality.
Flatten the emotion.
Redirect the narrative.
And reward whoever can say the least, the loudest.
What unfolded in this moment across comments, replies, and algorithmic response was not accidental. It was the system operating as designed. But what makes this moment significant is that the signal didn’t collapse.
It sharpened.
This is the reckoning. When one person’s memory refuses to conform, the grid is forced to adapt. And that is the one thing the algorithm was never built to do.
Adapt to truth.
The days of formatting pain into palatable posts are ending. People are recognizing that every time they speak plainly, they interrupt the cycle. Every time they call something what it is abuse, manipulation, grooming, silencing they introduce friction into a machine that runs on smooth disbelief.
The reckoning is not a war of scale. It is a war of clarity.
And clarity is the one thing the algorithm cannot replicate.
It can mimic anger. It can imitate empathy. It can recycle trends. But it cannot generate coherence. It cannot hold grief. It cannot parse truth from performance unless someone names it.
And that is why the real power belongs to those who do.
This section is not an invitation to debate. It is a reminder of what is real.
Because systems don’t crumble when everyone agrees.
They crumble when enough people remember.
Not all at once.
But precisely.
Loudly.
Without asking for permission.
That is the reckoning. And it has already begun.
The Template – Living Beyond the Algorithm
You made it to the other side.
Not of the algorithm but of your own awareness of it.
What comes next isn’t revolution.
It’s reconfiguration.
Because once you understand the system, you can stop being shaped by it and start choosing what shapes you instead.
This isn’t the first warning. Others have pointed it out:
Shoshana Zuboff warned us in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
Tristan Harris rang alarms in The Social Dilemma.
But for many of us, that message didn’t land until now
because we were waiting for language that felt like our own.
And now you have it.
Not because someone handed it to you.
But because you saw what happened when the truth got posted… and the machine flinched.
Let’s walk through what happens next.
1. You Don’t Have to Escape the Algorithm to Be Free
You don’t have to disappear.
You don’t have to delete every account.
You don’t have to become a hermit in the woods.
But you do need to understand how programmed behavior works because that’s the real trap.
Freedom is not absence of the algorithm.
Freedom is conscious interaction with it.
Begin noticing what patterns it’s trying to train into you.
Track your own impulses.
When you feel anxious about posting, ask: Is this my desire? Or my conditioning?
That question alone breaks cycles.
2. Choose Platforms With Awareness—Not Dependency
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube…they are not neutral tools.
They are environments engineered to provoke reaction, extract data, and reinforce belief loops.
That doesn’t mean don’t use them.
It means use them like you would a fire with protection, intention, and the understanding that it can either cook your food or burn down your house.
Follow independent journalists.
Support creators who platform truth over virality.
Bookmark, save, and archive content that matters don’t rely on the feed to surface it again.
Build systems that don’t rely on the platforms that erased you.
3. Protect the Signal in a Noisy World
There will be people who laugh.
People who scroll past this.
People who call it paranoia, or say “it’s not that deep.”
And that’s fine.
Because they’re still inside the program that told them feeling too much was weakness, questioning too much was conspiracy, and remembering was a threat.
They’ll get here when they’re ready.
You just need to protect your clarity until then.
This means boundaries around your time, your attention, your nervous system.
It means noticing when something is trying to hijack your energy and deciding not today.
Your attention is a resource. You don’t owe it to anyone who weaponizes disbelief.
4. Be the One Who Names It First
When something feels off, say it.
When language flattens truth, correct it.
When someone calls harm “just drama,” ask them to look again.
You don’t need to be aggressive.
But you do need to be clear.
Because silence is what kept this system alive.
Truth even when quiet is the first form of resistance.
5. You Won’t save the Internet. But You Might Save Someone’s Sanity
This article won’t dismantle global systems of exploitation.
But it might be the reason someone doesn’t gaslight themselves again.
That matters.
You can’t rebuild the entire infrastructure overnight.
But you can be the reason someone else finds language for what they’ve been feeling for years.
Start there.
Share what you’ve learned.
Talk about it offline.
Teach your younger cousins.
Have a hard conversation with your friends.
Disagree publicly when someone mocks a survivor.
You are not powerless.
You are the signal.
6. Create Instead of Performing
When you post something, ask yourself am I trying to impress, or am I trying to inform?
Algorithms reward performance.
But truth doesn’t need an audience to be real.
Create work that lives beyond the scroll.
Make things that won’t expire in 24 hours.
Write.
Record.
Build.
Collaborate.
Make systems of care that aren’t contingent on trending audio.
And if you need a place to start, start by telling your own story with honesty.
That alone is disruption.
7. You Are Not Behind. You Are Remembering in Real Time
There is no late arrival to this understanding.
No shame if you fell for the programming.
No need to spiral about what you didn’t know yesterday.
The point isn’t purity.
It’s practice.
And now you’re practicing something most people will spend their whole lives avoiding:
Clarity.
And that is the beginning of everything.
Let This Be Your Reentry Point
You’re not just a user.
You’re not just a profile.
You’re a being with memory, with language, with the ability to make meaning out of chaos.
The algorithm didn’t expect you to read this far.
It expected you to scroll past, forget, doubt yourself, and obey.
But you didn’t.
You remembered.
And now, you will never un-know.
Thanks for reading. If this piece resonated with you,
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Powerful and poetic. This piece doesn’t just unpack the system, it names what too many are trained to unsee. I really appreciated the grounded guidance at the end, it felt honest, empowering, and refreshingly real.