I've been saying this for yearsf: LLM-GENERATED SAMPLES ARE JUST FALSIFIED DATA. It's similar to just lying about what people said, or taking your own best guesses. HEY FELLOW SOCIAL SCIENTISTS: STOP TRYING TO FIND WAYS TO AVOID ACTUALLY TALKING TO THE PEOPLE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE STUDYING

My college wrote about my and colleagues' work for National Civic Hacking Day. The article covers NSF-funded research with @profprof.bsky.social, @kthorson.bsky.social, @ankolika.bsky.social, @afbat.bsky.social, Marialina Antolini, Benji Davis around volunteer moderators of local online groups.

And another gem from the summer: Nicholas Proferes @kelleyhas2es.bsky.social @kthorson.bsky.social @ankolika.bsky.social Chia-Fang Chang and Ava Francesca Battocchio write about the rhetoric of localism in platform content moderation. Read more here journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

De, Cotter, Kanthawala, McAtee, Ritchart, Kadur: "Whoever needs to see it, will see it": Motivations and Labor of Creating Algorithmic Conspirituality Content on TikTok https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16851 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.16851 https://arxiv.org/html/2506.16851

Replacing human judgement with mathematical models to make things more "fair" and "consistent" is an idea that's been around for over a century, but we keep discovering (again and again) that these models fail due to their design and input while providing cover for systemic cruelty.

Ankolika De: "Business on WhatsApp is tough now- but am I really a businesswoman?" Exploring Challenges with Adapting to Changes in WhatsApp Business https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.10913 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.10913 https://arxiv.org/html/2502.10913

Excited for the incredible Ankolika De to present our work at this year’s FAccT! We call out the “hard to reach” myth for international participants, address IRB’s demands that misalign with participant experiences, & how IRBs don’t understand social media platform specificity @shaheenk.bsky.social

De et al: Who Gets Heard? Calling Out the "Hard-to-Reach" Myth for Non-WEIRD Populations' Recruitment and Involvement in Research #FAccT2025

New OA pub day! Given the dwindling of local newspapers, folks are turning to social media. Platforms are discursively constructing local community groups as a new kind of hub. But local volunteer mods are the ones who are charged to realize these visions. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....