Wedging: The Favorite Tactic of Coordinated Trolls

This is an important concept to understand if you’re going to be on “social media” these days.

I wanted to highlight a concept that’s well understood by bad actors on social media, but not so well by everyone else.

Jim Stewartson, Antifascist🇺🇸, Mike Flynn is Q @jimstewartson

🧵 Let’s talk about “wedging” on social media. Imagine there’s someone on Twitter saying something you don’t want them to say. Perhaps this is ideological, or perhaps you’re being paid. What do you do? First, you try to shut them up. #RealTwitterFiles

If you’ve been following me at all, you will understand this tactic, although maybe not by its name. The idea is, basically, if we can’t silence you completely, we’re going to reduce your influence chunk-by-chunk.

When I was banned from Twitter for not breaking the rules, the wedging was incredibly easy to spot. All you had to do was say my name in a positive light, and a variety of bad actors paid to search my name would swoop in with lies and distortions to make sure you never did it again. It was so blatant, it was almost funny.

Wedging can be done person by person or in groups. For example, by influencing a podcast to repeat harmful lies about people, thereby poisoning the entire audience against them.

Now that I’m back on Twitter, the attempted wedging is literally constant. Every thread or popular tweet has a bunch of paid trolls trying to wedge people away from me. So be it. I won’t be advertising them or their lies here.

Jim Stewartson, Antifascist🇺🇸, Mike Flynn is Q @jimstewartson

You can find allegations of me being an antisemite despite me being half-Jewish, that I’m misogynistic, homophobic, running a psyop, abusive, mentally ill, or literally anything else negative you can say about someone. To wedge them. For the record, I am none of those things.

So when someone approaches you with a negative story about another person designed to push you away from them, ask yourself why. Ask yourself: “Are they wedging?”