Puppets or partners? Governing cyborg propaganda in the digital public square

ArXi:2602.13088v2 Announce Type: replace-cross The distinction between genuine grassroots activism and automated influence operations is collapsing. While contemporary policy debates prioritize fully autonomous generative agents and synthetic content, this paper offers a conceptual contribution: we develop 'cyborg propaganda,' a closed-loop architecture combining verified human accounts with algorithmic automation to generate personalized content at scale, as a distinct and undertheorized threat to cratic dis.