# Black Mirror — Bandersnatch **Format:** 2018 Interactive Film **Case Family:** Simulation / Choice Architecture / World Sovereignty **Case Status:** Load-Bearing **Related:** [[Black Mirror]], [[Black Mirror Episodes]], [[World Simulation (Control Substrate)]], [[Human Agency]], [[Ambient Governance]] --- ## Case Stefan experiences choices whose available branches are selected by an external viewer and production system. The interactive form makes the audience an administrator inside another person's world while also keeping the audience inside options authored by the platform. Agency therefore exists at several nested levels: Stefan chooses within a constructed branch, the viewer selects among offered paths, and the authoring system determines which paths can exist at all. The highest power belongs to the layer that defines the choice architecture. ## Constitutional Questions - Is a choice free when another actor defines every available branch? - What disclosure is owed to a subject living inside an authored decision tree? - Can user interactivity conceal the platform's deeper authorship of both user and character options? ## Key Insight **The ability to choose among branches is not sovereignty when another layer authors the branch structure.** ## See Also [[Residual Sovereign]], [[Ring Zero]], [[Narrative Control]], [[Cybernetics]], [[articles/Human Proxy-Based Reinforcement (DeepRL) in Human Environments|Human Proxy-Based Reinforcement]] ## Sources / Provenance - Primary fictional source: _Black Mirror: Bandersnatch_ (2018 interactive film).