A landmark lawsuit against Google and Meta went to trial this week. The jury’s verdict will influence the outcome of thousands of similar cases across the country. @madlinbmek.bsky.social on what it all means: on-the-media.visitlink.me/IYc6S1

Had a brief cameo to discuss my research in this episode about the social media addiction trials! Really good listen for those interested in these cases in the US…

We absolutely MUST adopt relegation in American sports. How else can we compete with these levels of haters on a global scale?

In her latest column, @bakerdphd.bsky.social looks at the history of AAU regarding campus free speech. If they took a stance on many key issues today, some status-obsessed public universities would face very difficult membership decisions.

Research finds that people overestimate how many social media users post harmful content--which makes us think the world is worse than it really is. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Appreciate this thread--was curious whether the data backed up that narrative and the anecdotal evidence I'd seen from users across social media. Also 100% agree that more transparency is crucial to getting a complete picture of how the ownership change is/isn't impacting the site.

Wrote about a recent study that suggested calling it "social media addiction" can do more harm than social media itself, in that it takes agency away from people, and makes it more difficult to help people who actually have a problem with not being able to put down social media.

As a longtime follower, it’s really cool to see my work covered here! Thank you 🙏🏻

Florida took another step Thursday toward banning all its public universities from hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas. The public comment period on the proposal will last two weeks: www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

There was a paper recently advocating for friction in certain domains…this also seems like a case where more friction would be beneficial…

"Haidt’s claims of inherent harm are not well-founded, and the policy proposals to ban kids entirely from social media are a bad idea. For older teenage boys, having no social media was associated with *worse* outcomes than having too much of it"

For anyone new to the idea that Alt National Parks Service is a grift, @taylorlorenz.bsky.social made a nice little primer about the hijacking of resistance politics by hucksters and charlatans youtu.be/mz3Rf820ozE?...

"Contemporary fascism is simply neoliberalism with its multicultural mask off. We have been heading in this direction since the latter half of the 20th century, at least."

Was fun to speak with @apnews.com's Kaitlyn Huamani about anti-doomscrolling interventions and my work on social media addiction / habits! Full article here: apnews.com/article/soci...

One of the issues that has come up again and again in my reporting on misinformation and social media is the massive influence social media companies have on research in the field. Last night a preprint dropped that tries to get at this with some numbers. My piece in @science.org (and 🧪🧵 coming):

Governments are banning teenagers from social media to cover up officials' failure to confront real crises. It’s wrong, dangerous, and cruel. mikemales.substack.com/p/government...

I am a victim of deepfake porn. The technology has reached ubiquity since I was targeted in 2022. How many more women and girls need to bear their scars to the world before someone with real power in the tech industry stands up for us? (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

For many years I've assigned @shuhbillskee.bsky.social 's nice BBC Ideas video on the myth of tech "addiction" www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSNp... - and it has cute animations, students like it. But @taylorlorenz.bsky.social released this interview with @aanixel.bsky.social youtu.be/K-0z0j0QvPI?...

This and the actual paper are both really good. Must-reads.

saw someone recently who was in their feelings about this, but I think it just gets more obviously true every day. www.everythingishorrible.net/p/our-proble...

The only solution is for corporations who manufacture systems that do this and demonstrate no interest in preventing it to be legally on the hook. “Oops” is not a legal defense, and “we tried” isn’t enough. There’s no alternative that makes sense.

“None of these laws actually crack down on Big Tech. Instead, age verification schemes consolidate power among the largest and most powerful tech conglomerates and allow the companies to harvest and profit from even more highly sensitive data from users.“

Was really exciting for me to sit down with @taylorlorenz.bsky.social and discuss my research on her Podcast, Power User! I’ve followed her social media coverage for a long time. Highly recommend watching the full YouTube version below (has visuals from the relevant paper): youtu.be/K-0z0j0QvPI?...

Thanks to the editors @pnas.org for their support! New piece from me, @georgiaturner.bsky.social and @fassiluisa.bsky.social…

Fantastic and blistering comment about the need for transparency in industry-academic collaborations. From @georgiaturner.bsky.social, Ian Anderson, and Luisa Fassi www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In the 2020 Election Project, Meta collaborated w/ academics to study how FB impacts elections. ⬇️ @aanixel.bsky.social, @fassiluisa.bsky.social & I argue that such research collaborations, w/ clear conflicts of interest, should be regulated. Would love to hear thoughts!💬 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Very happy to see this paper published!! Big thanks to all the mentors, peers, reviewers, and editors who gave us great feedback throughout the writing process...readers: please don't hesitate to reach out to us about how we could work together to improve transparency in social media research 😎

"The watchlist is not a little sunglasses icon. It is a scope with someone’s sight that you would think of on a gun for precision. That to me is terrifying. It is threatening. You don’t have to be very far between the lines, between figuring out what a watchlist might mean."

When this "AI" bubble pops, the men pretending they weren't pushing the hype, like "critics" whose position is "AGI is real but LLMs aren't the way," who were in eugenicist and "AI existential risk"🙄 circles, will get specials discussing what they saw coming, when its the women who told you so.

This article explains why the right's "censorship industrial complex" myth has been so successful: "The government wasn’t defending her, she was banned from defending herself, and even potential allies were staying quiet, having sensed which way the wind was blowing."

Requiring foreign visitors to hand over 5 years of social media isn’t “security,” it’s unchecked government control. All-seeing surveillance systems don’t make us safer. They are in direct opposition to our civil liberties. www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

On the internet, age verification doesn't know you're a dog.

Thanks for sharing our research!!

Cool to see our newest work on social media covered by @the-independent.com! www.independent.co.uk/news/health/...

A novel new study finds you can reduce polarization on X simply with a simple change to the algorithm. I spoke with the researchers: www.platformer.news/stanford-pol...

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Most basic neuroscience research in the U.S. is funded by the federal government, but there is an entire funding landscape that lies beyond those federal agencies. To bring those sources together, @thetransmitter.bsky.social presents a funding source directory: bit.ly/4pBBF2B #StateOfNeuroscience

STOKED that our paper on smartphone and spatial habits is out in Scientific Reports! 🎉 Using mobility 🏃 and app 📱 data (27,446,977 logs; 7,226 trip questionnaires) we found that smartphone habits are stronger in habitually traveled and visited spaces 🏡 Personal thread below! rdcu.be/eQ7q0

I’m glad to see on platform ranking algorithm work done without platform scientists in the mix. I think it’s quite telling that, by the only means we have to verify Metas election collaborations results… we can’t confirm their claims of little to no effect.

Excited to see these studies (finally) published in Scientific Reports! 🚨 S1: More social media users perceived themselves as addicted than met clinical addiction criteria. S2: Increasing perceived addiction hurt perceived control over use and increased self-blame for overuse. Thread below... 🧵

The brilliant @alice-gregory.bsky.social asks what smart phone bans mean for kids like hers who needs their phone to stay alive

Today’s “teenage mental health crisis” and social media panic are founded in nostalgic myths. Our best long-term surveys and statistics show Boomer and Xer teens were no happier or more “together” than teens are today

“And while the U.S. Supreme Court okayed such age verification when it came to children accessing obscene material online, @kateruane.bsky.social with CDT said the high court appeared more skeptical on blanket social media bans like what VanValkenburg wants.”

Meta has exhibited a clear pattern of behavior in which it undermines and/or buries most negative research; it's tough to believe they'd put honest effort into any research that risks reputational damage...though that pattern itself should be more damaging than any one finding...

It would, of course, be great if the underlying results were made public but it looks like meta in 2019 ran withdrawal experiments to examine polarization and well being ahead of forging collaborations with academics. Seems like more than enough to design bias the collaborations towards nulls 🧵

I don't understand how anyone can watch how blatantly Grok is manipulated to answer the way ownership desires it to and then act like the other LLM chatbots couldn't possibly be similarly but less obviously compromised to produce responses in whatever way corporate interests and priorities dictate.

I wonder if this will make people actually slow their roll in terms of taking information from people they do not know as sacrosanct. Probably not. The amount of lying and deception online is overwhelming.

X rolled out a new feature overnight showing where accounts are based. This network of “Trump-supporting independent women” that claimed to be “real Americans” are based in Thailand. The photos were stolen from European models & posts pushed pro-Trump lines while targeting Islam and LGBTQ people.

“Are we the baddies?”