Abstract
<p>The rapid migration of bereavement support to digital platforms has fundamentally altered the temporal and affective landscapes of mourning. We propose the notion of the grief loop: a sociotechnical feedback mechanism wherein algorithmic recommendation systems identify, amplify, and recursively feed back emotional distress to users to maximize engagement and data extraction. While digital spaces offer unprecedented access to communal support, the grief loop suggests that these platforms paradoxically institutionalize sorrow as a persistent state of consumption. Through a qualitative study of 45 bereaved participants, we examine how algorithmic curation shapes the trajectory of loss, finding that personalized content streams often prioritize high-arousal negative affect, transform spontaneous mourning into performative digital labor, monetize the vulnerability of the bereaved through targeted advertising, and cultivate a dependency on platform-mediated validation. These findings indicate that the architecture of contemporary social media does not merely host grief; it actively structures it as a continuous, profitable commodity. We conclude by suggesting that current platform design practices necessitate urgent reform to protect the emotional autonomy of vulnerable users and to mitigate the extractive nature of digital mourning.</p>