Describing itself as an "ongoing, conspiratorial, aesthetico-political, practice-led research framework," the ASRG is not a traditional academic department nor a conventional protest movement. It is a self-identified militant research unit operating at the intersection of digital culture and information technology, dedicated to developing and disseminating what it terms "algorithmic sabotage."
The ASRG's research also engages with existing sabotage typologies in the digital age. It builds on academic frameworks that have categorized sabotage into different forms, such as "classic sabotage," "subtle sabotage," and "resistance to techno-sciences". This nuance is vital, as the group’s methods—while disruptive—are often subtle and targeted, focusing on data corruption and process disruption rather than destruction of physical infrastructure.
As artificial intelligence becomes more entrenched in daily life, the work of the Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group becomes increasingly relevant. Their research acts as a critical intervention against the passive acceptance of digital surveillance and automated decision-making. algorithmic sabotage research group asrg
, a collection of ten statements (numbered 0 to 9) that outline the principles of militant algorithmic agency. Theorizing Algorithmic Sabotage
To counter aggressive web scrapers that grab digital art and writing without permission, the group maps out methods to trap automated crawlers. Web servers can be set up to spot artificial intelligence bots and redirect them into "tarpits"—environments that feed the scraper endless loops of gibberish, nonsense code, or massive files. This drains the scraper's computational resources and wastes massive amounts of processing time. 3. Static Site Sabotage This nuance is vital, as the group’s methods—while
: A cohort of artists engaged in "cultural red teaming" and creative misuse of AI, which presented at events like DEFCON 31. Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG)
Through projects like their open collaborative texts and independent zines—frequently styled using specialized, open-source aesthetic systems like the Alternative Layout System —ASRG blends radical graphic design, critical theory, and functional software manipulation into a unified anti-authoritarian practice. Tactics of Techno-Disobedience , a collection of ten statements (numbered 0
A structural labor of subversion aimed at halting automated, unthinking corporate exploitation.
Web crawlers deployed by tech companies often exhaust local server resources while scraping content. ASRG documents various methods to identify these specific "AI" crawlers and trap them in an environment known as a . The server intentionally responds to the crawler at an agonizingly slow pace while continuously serving randomized text generation (or repeating files like the Bee Movie script), forcing the scraper to burn immense amounts of compute time and operational capital on pure garbage data. Text-Based Camouflage and Poisoning