Conspiracy, monetisation and weirdness: this is why social media has become ungovernable | Nesrine Malik

The royals are perennial clickbait, but the wild online bunkum over the Princess of Wales reveals new and darker forces

On TikTok, there is a short clip of what an AI voiceover claims is a supposed ring glitch" in the video in which Princess of Wales reveals her cancer diagnosis. It has 1.3 million views. Others, in which users break down" aspects of the video and analyse the saga with spurious evidence, also rack up millions of views and shares. I have then seen them surface on X, formerly known as Twitter, and even shared on WhatsApp by friends and family, who see in these videos, presented as factual and delivered in reporter-style, nothing that indicates that this is wild internet bunkum.

Something has changed about the way social media content is presented to us. It is both a huge and subtle shift. Until recently, types of content were segregated by platform. Instagram was for pictures and short reels, TikTok for longer videos, X for short written posts. Now Instagram reels post TikTok videos, which post Instagram reels, and all are posted on X. Often it feels like a closed loop, with the algorithm taking you further and further away from discretion and choice in who you follow. All social media apps now have the equivalent of a For you" page, a feed of content from people you don't follow, and which, if you don't consciously adjust your settings, the homepage defaults to. The result is that increasingly, you have less control over what you see.