Text as Data has been a wonderful, long-running, non-archival workshop for empirical research at the intersection of AI and social science (especially work involving text). After a few years off, it will be happening again this year as a one-day event in early October!

Text as Data is happening at Berkeley right before COLM. Please share!

lol love this

"Whoops! Most arXiv papers contain information never meant to be shared. Passwords, GPS coordinates and private conversations have all been found in the metadata and source files of millions of preprint submissions." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

As some may have heard me talk about at #ACL2026, I'm excited to share a new preprint on approaches to validation when using LLMs to measure concepts in social science, led by @madesai.bsky.social and @azjacobs.bsky.social !! Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2607.07915

ACL 2026 was fun! We presented our benchmark, which reveals that frontier models struggle to moderate pluralistic communities on Reddit. A fun bonus: creating all the colorful plots for the paper! 🎨 Our paper, code, and benchmark are all available here: github.com/osome-iu/Plu...

See here for @isabelcorpus.bsky.social paper showing that the "write with AI" feature on change.org made petitions longer and their text more complicated. The outcomes? Did not improve. arxiv.org/abs/2511.13949

In case anyone is curious to study how network effects lose critical mass, search inclusion is a good opportunity to update scientific theories of collective action

The Tech Impact and Policy Center is thrilled to have been selected as one of 30 @safeonlinefund.bsky.social grantees. Our project, Co-Designing a Child-Safe LLM, was chosen for its potential as an innovative model to address urgent child protection challenges in the digital age.

Early-bird registration for #TSRConf 2026 closes soon! Join us for interdisciplinary conversations on: ➤ AI governance ➤ platform accountability ➤ online harms ➤ and other key #TrustAndSafety issues Register by July 15 for reduced pricing! 🎟️ stanford.io/3SgrmWl

If you're not sure where to start, the /setup-site skill allows you to simply share screenshots of a site you like, or even a link as inspiration. Then tweak the design however you want via conversation with Claude. You need a website! I hope this helps. 🤓

One of the first things I learned as a PhD student was that you *need* a website. I built a template site that uses Claude Code to easily design and maintain your personal site—hosted free on GitHub. Clone it, then run the "/setup-site" skill in Claude Code and Claude walks you through set up.

We should pay peer reviewers Paying reviewers led to faster decisions—an average of 5.5 working days vs 38 days for unpaid reviews And review quality improved (judged by handling editors) Reviewers who delivered a good peer review in 4 days were paid $290 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My upcoming book is absolutely packed to the brim with em dashes—more em dashes than any well-adjusted human being could possibly need or want—and if any of you tries to claim they are the result of some soulless LLM rather than my own unhinged compulsion I will fight you.

Very pleased to share this, out today - we highlight a shift in how misinformation is used not primarily to misinform, but to strategically influence public debate www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Was Hines v Stamos Cheryl Hines suing John Stamos over the long-awaited Full House/Curb Your Enthusiasm crossover? Nope, it was an attempt to suppress academic research into the organized manipulation of online platforms. After three years we finally won. But at great cost.

Two years ago, my colleagues and I were sued by Stephen Miller's America First Legal. The Hines v Stamos case — built atop a number of false allegations — was a central element of the "censorship industrial complex" myth. Today, that case was dismissed (by a Trump judge in LA). We won.

Today we beat Stephen Miller’s lawsuit mill in court! For 3 years I’ve been a defendant in a case filed by America First Legal on behalf of Gateway Pundit & a random antivaxxer we’d never heard of until she sued us. The plaintiffs claimed we “censored” them. It was a lie. They just lost.

The Trust & Safety Research Conference is more than a conference. #TSRConf is a global space where people working across research, practice, policy, and journalism come together to learn from one another and broaden how we understand #TrustAndSafety across different regional contexts.

N.I.H. Announces World’s Largest Integrated Health Database www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/s...

As the public becomes aware of non-consensual adult deepfakes, our just-published research sheds light on how AI platforms commoditize and incentivize these forms of abuse: 🧪 dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... w/ @shalmoli-ghosh.bsky.social & @matthewdeverna.com

Thrilled to announce the next talk in our Research with AI Agents Workshop Series. Dr. Byungkyu Lee from NYU will present "Using Coding Agents as Research Tools: A Plan-Based Workflow for the Age of Generative AI." Time: Mon, June 29, 2026, 10am-11am ET 1/2

"These are not the complaints of established scientists defending their budgets, but rather the stated intentions of the next generation – the scientists who would, in ordinary times, become the principal investigators of the future." www.nber.org/papers/w35330

The cuts to science in the US are decimating the talent pipeline and leading to a brain drain. A survey of biomedical scientists found that only half now say they are likely to remain in academia, down 22 percentage points from how they felt 6 months earlier.

We are thrilled to announce @dgrand.bsky.social as one of our keynote speakers for #TSRConf 2026! David is a professor at Cornell University, where his research draws on computational social science and cognitive science to understand how people form beliefs and decide what to share online.

HTML presentations + your favorite coding agent = magic. With a GitHub repo that has access to your latex file, figures, tables, etc. you can have a full presentation that mirrors your paper narrative in 2 minutes...

Jeesh! Just what we needed: another IT tool that overdevelops the upper body and encourages people to skip leg day.

Registration is now open for #TSRConf 2026! Join us at Stanford University for conversations on platform accountability, #AI governance, online harms, transparency, and digital policy. Sign up by July 15 for early-bird pricing! 🔗 stanford.io/3SgrmWl #TrustAndSafety #OnlineSafety

Last week at #CySoc2026 at #ICWSM2026, Los Angeles, we brought together researchers studying #onlinetoxicity, #onlineharassment, platform dynamics, #onlineinfluence, cross-lingual threats, and the growing role of AI in online platforms. 1/3

This can't be good... "What this office is doing is taking the parts of the federal government that touch you directly, your prescription, your voter registration, your passport, your federal login, out of the agencies that legally own them and rebuilding them on White House infrastructure."

So fun catching up with old friends and meeting new ones @icwsm.bsky.social this year! Leaving a bit early but stay in touch!!

Excited to share this year's program for #CySoc2026 @icwsm.bsky.social in Los Angeles. This year’s workshop focuses on human–AI relationships, online toxicity, platform dynamics, and broader societal risks emerging around generative and agentic AI. 🧵1/2

Featuring keynotes by @angelhwang.bsky.social and @tiziano.bsky.social along with a panel on “Human–AI Relationships: Risks, Rewards, and Responsibilities.” More: cy-soc.github.io/2026/ @matthewdeverna.com @yang3kc.bsky.social @frapierri.bsky.social @yelenamejova.bsky.social @mrjimmyblack.com 🧵2/2

New research suggests a social media platform’s structure (who can interact with who and how content flows) matters more than its recommendation algorithm in shaping what spreads and how good that information is. arxiv.org/abs/2605.19204

Coming up today at 12PM PT — join us!

Although human morality evolved in an environment of small groups, the primary source of moral content for over 5 billion people now comes from social media. I will be at the Stanford Tech & Policy Center talking about how the global technological transformation has created a new moral ecosystem

Hey NYC friends, this is something really cool and unusual that I am doing in a couple of weeks -- a public pub talk about my research! Thanks to @pintofscience.us for organizing. Wednesday, May 20th at 7pm (it's $2 plus the beer you will be having). pintofscience.us/event/smart-...

Could bad actors game #SocialProof metrics to induce the use of malign #software? New in #JOTS, a study by Lucas Shen, @soodoku.bsky.social, and @danweitzel.net draws on two field experiments on the largest developer platform, #GitHub, to examine the impact of social proof on developer adoption.

Extremely cool job alert!

Bit of a clickbait headline but this opinion piece has a lot of verbatim quotes from a bunch of smart people about the persuasive effects of AI and the potential impact on politics. (Many of those takes are much more measured than the headline suggests).

"We found that high-quality constitutional documents combined with fictional stories portraying an aligned AI can reduce agentic misalignment" www.anthropic.com/research/tea... Who would have thought to use stories to align LMs? Oh, it was me in 2019... 1/

Today is the last day for early bird registration! Authors: to reserve your presentation spot you must register today!

Out now in the #JOTS Spring 2026 issue, a new study by Toby Shulruff and Amanda Menking draws on interviews with platform-side #TrustAndSafety (T&S) professionals to understand the stressors of T&S work, and T&S professionals’ motivations, skills, and strategies for managing wellbeing.

Reminder for authors! To secure your presentation spot, you must register by the early bird deadline, May 8th. ic2s2-2026.org/register/

Thank you to everyone who submitted proposals for #TSRConf 2026! We are excited to review your #TrustAndSafety submissions and confirm presenters in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, please mark your calendars to secure your spot for the conference when registration opens on June 10!

Next ICWSM deadline coming up soon!

Early bird registration closes on May 8th! www.youtube.com/watch?v=p412...

Journal of Online Trust and Safety published its Spring 2026 Issue and here is the list of authors and editors for the issue. Read the issue at tsjournal.org/index.php/jo... and follow the authors here!