Note: persistence applies to representation and exposure pathways, not to the original act itself.
7.1 Risk propagation mechanism
Distributed architectures convert single harm events into persistent, replicable exposure states. Once injected, harm media propagates through caching, mirroring, and algorithmic ranking, generating secondary and tertiary harms while maintaining continuity independent of the original actor.
7.2 Foreseeable amplification pathway
Where ranking and recommendation systems optimize for engagement, content that reliably elicits high-arousal responses becomes attention-efficient and is preferentially surfaced. Context collapse and reupload/editing practices make recurrence predictable. The exposure ? engagement ? ranking feedback loop is foreseeable at scale [148][149][150].
7.3 Failure of duty of care
A duty-of-care failure occurs where platforms treat distributed harm as item-level “graphic content” and rely on takedown as primary mitigation despite known replication dynamics, rapid reconstitution patterns, and predictable secondary/tertiary harms [151][152]. Where the system architecture continues to reward distribution, instance removal is not proportionate to the risk.
7.4 Structural selection effect
Systems that reward engagement without semantic harm discrimination selectively advantage content and actors associated with higher levels of shock, outrage, and repeat viewing. This selection effect is expressed as persistence under suppression, where replication can outpace removal. Communities adapt: the system continues to privilege distribution capacity as a basis for status differentiation [153][154].
Information Failure Modes in Networked Violence
Elijah Morgan
© 2026 Elijah Morgan
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19599231
Version 1.1
Published 2026-04-15