Despite the fact that Meta is poised to ban political ads on their platforms by October 10th, Dutch parties are ramping up spending, about 160k Euro in past 30 days 🇳🇱 As always I will be tracking targeting (w/ @whotargets.me) as long as ads run. Ex.: D66 is heavily trying to reach younger people!

Great to see this out! With @bsky.charispapaevangelou.eu we analyse the DSA “Statement of Reasons” database, the EU-mandated archive of moderation decisions by online platforms. We examine what kind of platform observability the database affords & find large regional and cross-platform differences.

[New paper] Trading nuance for scale? Platform observability and content governance under the DSA, By @bsky.charispapaevangelou.eu & @favstats.eu policyreview.info/articles/ana... #DSA

Is this the first time ever that Donald Trump publicly labeled something that he attempted to do was a failure?

Ben Guerin, whose agency has contributed to multiple winning election campaigns in the UK and beyond, on why the EU's political ad regulation seems to be turning into an own goal.

Haven't done one in a while so here we go: as voters head to the polls, here’s how some 🇳🇴 Norwegian parties spent their Meta ad budgets. Check out more in the the dashboard (in collab with @whotargets.me): favstats.github.io/no25/

Haven't done one in a while so here we go: as voters head to the polls, here’s how some 🇳🇴 Norwegian parties spent their Meta ad budgets. Check out more in the the dashboard (in collab with @whotargets.me): favstats.github.io/no25/

Stay tuned for the Dutch version of the CampAIgntracker! 🇳🇱 Together with @meinungsfuehrer.bsky.social we will be documenting the AI posts that circulate during the upcoming Dutch snap elections on October 29th. Here a sneak peek of images that we found.

Stay tuned for the Dutch version of the CampAIgntracker! 🇳🇱 Together with @meinungsfuehrer.bsky.social we will be documenting the AI posts that circulate during the upcoming Dutch snap elections on October 29th. Here a sneak peek of images that we found.

If any early bird is interested the panel moved to the Law Building, on floor 3, room 319!

Today starts #ecpr25! ✨ On Thursday, you can hear me talk about how MPs' experiences influence and shape the representation of disabled people in German politics.

🚨 PhD Position at the University of Amsterdam 🚨 Join my team as a computer scientist / computational social scientist working on LLMs, social media, and politics. We offer freedom, impact, and an inspiring environment at one of Europe's leading universities. 🔗 werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

This has been the bargain that US big tech companies have reached with Trump. We support you and you protect us.

An interesting thing about Reform's digital advertising is that they barely target ads at all. Almost every ad they've bought since last year's election has been targeted at everyone over 18 in the UK.

In the last 90 days Gavin Newsom has spent +1.2M USD on political ads on Facebook and Instagram. Interestingly: ads are not targeted at all. Which means it can give us an indication about who Meta thinks his messages are most relevant for. Ads are more likely reaching older women in California.

This may look like unity but political leaders only arrange themselves in a sine wave when they are in heavy distress.

Weekend project: New actionsMonitoR #RStats 📦 gets all the GitHub workflows in your GitHub account (authorized by PAT) and can display them in a searchable table github.com/smach/action... Written almost 💯by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro #GenAI [There's also a repo name column not in image]

Interesting use of deepfakes for good. Quite fascinating, something I hadn't seen before. German public broadcaster (on its history show) is using actors with deepfaked visuals to make historical figures come to life.

I am sure I am not the only one to have observed this but, but I see basically no meaningful difference between GPT 4 and 5?

'tis me

We've been tracking the rise of ChatGPT use in the Netherlands! Our third update of the AI Opinion Monitor shows a meteoric rise in use amongst youth, with 43% reporting to use it regularly. Check it out yourself: monitor.algosoc.org

Foreboder: in these interflowing timelines, the best envoyship is listening and translating our shared ineffabilities into things we can actually build.

As GPT-5 announcement is underway, know that a majority of Dutch people already make use of ChatGPT (and similar Gen AI models), 43% percent even say they use it "often" (5-7 on our 1-7 scale) -> the graph below

Luckily, under candlelights, muciferous doubts can ease.

manpack

COVID-19? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country?

Andry José Hernández Romero amazes me. The story of how he, a gay asylum seeker, & 251 other Venezuelans, were sent, without due process, to a torture prison, epitomizes the US government under this administration. His reaction to it epitomizes grace. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

As an academic, I hope my work is someday read by a dozen people. As a complete amateur video editor, I once edited a video of a snake getting robotic legs and set it to a Warhammer 40,000 trailer, and it's been viewed over 5 million times. 🤷

Little did I know that I would be still feeling this with ever increasing intensity.

Keine politische Werbung mehr bei Google & Meta – was soll das und was ist das Big Picture? Heute war ich Studiogast bei #Breitband im Deutschlandfunk Kultur, mein Interview ab ca 15:30 min. www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/mehr-ueberwa... @deutschlandfunk.de.web.brid.gy

Reading this article made me want to become a bird scientist.

Question for AI researchers: what scale do you use to ask in a survey experiment whether participants think the AI generated stimulus is credible/trustworthy/whether it is AI or not? #measurement #AI #askingforafriend 😉

Had a great time creating 2 tutorials for the Data Knowledge Hub by @bertelsmannst.bsky.social! 🔍 1. A guide to collecting ads from Meta’s Ad Library API. 🎯 2. Analyze targeting patterns using metatargetr. Hope it is useful for researchers, journalists, anyone interested in platform transparency!

Following Google, Meta is also ending political advertising in the EU. I gathered some thoughts on why this is an abdication of responsibility that will make our elections less transparent AND not even end paid political influence online. A short thread. 🧵 www.france24.com/en/live-news...

I attended this workshop that Jim Jordan is fearmongering about. It's so silly to see this rather boring meeting turned into a super nefarious event. These are just hypotheticals that served as a starting point for discussion, not more. It makes no recommendations, just asks what platforms would do.

Another top reason why ending political ads is a grave mistake and will disproportionately hurt legitimate actors. What we needed is better moderation, transparency and verification. Instead we are left with a wipe-out that is likely to do a lot of harm and favors the already powerful.

From October, charities like Medicins Sans Frontieres will find it harder to raise funds for their work in Gaza and elsewhere, because the staggeringly profitable Meta has decided it won't comply with new EU law. Ads like these will stop.

Top social issues advertisers across various EU countries in the last 90 days - lots and lots of fundraising advertising, particularly for aid to Gaza. From October, Meta stops this.

Meta's decision to discriminate against paid political speech in the EU is misguided and wrong. If you accept ads, you should accept political ads, it's as simple as that. The company can afford the cost of ensuring proper transparency and verification. www.euractiv.com/section/tech...

We @whotargets.me mainly focus on political/electoral advertising, but the cost to charity fundraising of this move is going to be enormous. The largest, most well-known charities in Europe will lose access to donors and revenue and therefore will deliver less. People will die.

Die Bundesregierung will Transparenz und Targeting politischer Werbung neu regeln. Das Digitalministerium hat einen Gesetzentwurf zur Umsetzung der entsprechenden EU-Verordnung erarbeitet. Bis 29. können Länder und Verbände Feedback einreichen. Hier ist der Entwurf: netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/20...

Following Google, Meta is also ending political advertising in the EU. I gathered some thoughts on why this is an abdication of responsibility that will make our elections less transparent AND not even end paid political influence online. A short thread. 🧵 www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Such beautiful news to wake up to. Let the cruelty this man and too many others endured at the hands of fascist and inhumane regimes never be forgotten. Andry's smile tell you everything you need to know. Fascism will fail. Humanity will prevail.

Such beautiful news to wake up to. Let the cruelty this man and so many others endured at the hands of a fascist and inhumane regime never be forgotten. Andry's smile tell you everything you need to know. Fascism will fail. Humanity will prevail.

Andry & the 252 other men sent, without due process, to a torture prison in El Salvador feels like the epitome—the soul, moral center, & quintessence—of this administration. I will never forget it or him. Also, if you don’t know the definition of grace, now you do. www.reuters.com/business/med...

I remember very vividly my English class at my German high school where we analyzed this painting specifically to unpack the racist symbolism in it.

Besides a very small bump around the day new elections were announced, spending on digital ads in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 has been fairly low, averaging at around 1k a day for all entities combined. We will probably only see campaigns ramp up after the summer. Follow @whotargets.me for more infos :)

In most of the world day-to-day weather variations are still much larger than long-term global warming. As a result, both daily record highs and daily record lows remain common. However as the world warms, new daily record highs consistently far outnumber new daily record lows. 🧪

Learn #RStats + #GenAI *and* help medics in Ukraine save lives! Join my Workshop for Ukraine on Sept 11 to see how to build LLM-powered chatbots with R that query your documents 1/3 💙💛 Register: sites.google.com/view/dariia-...

I self-published Without a Dawn in May. I made zero compromises, and I couldn't be happier how it turned out: store.steampowered.com/app/3145620/... 💛💚 Unfortunately, I've had very little luck with exposure, including the gaming press. 😩 #visualnovel #gamedev #steam