Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group %28asrg%29 Jun 2026
Sabotage is framed not as a simple hatred of technology (Luddism), but as a militant "figure of techno-disobedience" aimed at hegemonic systems. Labor of Subversion:
In plain English, it killed people slowly. Not with a bang, but with a thousand small denials. A physical therapy request flagged as "experimental." A psychiatric visit downgraded to a generic counseling code. A cancer screening delayed by three months—just enough time for Stage I to become Stage II.
The ASRG is currently developing the first "sabotage-resistant transformer architecture"—a modified attention mechanism that logs and restricts any gradient update that would create delayed-action failure modes. algorithmic sabotage research group %28asrg%29
The ASRG focuses on "artistic-activist resistances" and "prefigurative techno-political strategies" to disrupt harmful AI and algorithmic systems. Their documented tactics often involve:
: ASRG intentionally weaves radical feminist, anti-fascist, and decolonial critiques into their sabotage strategies to dismantle the "necropolitical" power of modern IT systems. Deep History and Narrative Sabotage is framed not as a simple hatred
It calls for dismantling "algorithmic domination" to create room for social autonomy and egalitarianism. Action-Oriented Solidarity:
Simultaneously, Aaron, a software developer granted anonymity, created . He described it as malicious software, “named after a carnivorous plant that will eat just about anything,” designed to trap crawlers for months in an infinite maze of static files to “poison AI models.” He hoped such tools would give “teeth” to robots.txt. A physical therapy request flagged as "experimental
A key practical concern for the group is the vulnerability of independent, self-hosted web platforms. Large corporations train generative models by indiscriminately scraping online data without user consent. Independent developers have adapted ASRG methodologies to implement server-side defenses. This includes serving fake texts or scripts to known AI web crawlers or forcing scrapers into "tarpits"—isolated server environments where they run infinite compute tasks on garbage data, dramatically increasing the financial and environmental cost of data extraction. 4. The Broader Landscape of Algorithmic Resistance
: Building collective resistance that expresses a different mentality from the "reductive optimizations" of corporate algorithms. Interdependence over Profit