A genuinely dispiriting thing about covering sexual violence is how often the suffering of women and children is metabolized as political point-scoring or titillating entertainment.

Anyways, ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

It’s amazing how much a woman behaving badly makes people think they have a hall pass to use the most sexist language and rhetoric they can think of

Years ago, my colleagues at Business Insider and I tracked YouTuber “cancellation” arcs. What we found is that for many entertainers, “cancellation” actually sets the stage for a redemption arc, one that can raise their profile higher than ever. It wasn’t career-ending. It was fuel.

Remembering an old post from a girl who was talkin w a guy on bumble or w/e and, when she said she did advocacy around infectious diseases, dude asked For or against the diseases? I see now that Robert F Kennedy Jr is the reason why you gotta ask such questions. That's a pro disease man right there

When people talk about the excesses of MeToo, they have to lie, because the reality is that there was no massive social reckoning forcing people to believe survivors or hold perpetrators accountable. In fact, there has been a significant backsliding and new punishments in rejection of MeToo

my number one piece of advice to people wanting to do a PhD is to pick a topic that makes you so. fucking. angry. truly incredible the level of motivation that unbridled rage can provide

YouTube/Google has written a letter to Jim Jordan best summarized as “Yes sir thank you Mr Jordan sir” It made Jordan so happy he wrote a very long tweet thread about it. In it, he gloats ab getting them to agree never to do the fact-checking kind of “censorship” and to moderate how he prefers.

Dante’s lesser known Tenth circle of hell is writing the last 500 or so words of any given piece of work

These people have smarted themselves into the dumbest fucking arguments. Determining whether someone is "doing politics the right way" depends almost entirely on the content of their speech! If someone lies constantly and endorses authoritarians that's not practicing good politics.

all i know is that normalizing debate with fascists has only facilitated the rise of fascism.

This immediately sprang to mind when I heard the news (for obvious reasons given my recent book). I think Gamergate will be studied by historians (assuming we have any of those left in the future) as not just an inflection point, but a flashing red warning sign that people didn't want to see.

Sure does make it seem as if the president was participating in the organized sexual abuse of girl children.

! I've been banging this drum for months Due process is how you determine things like 'is this person a citizen' & 'did they break a law' GOP's insistence that noncitizens & lawbreakers shouldn't get due process is putting the racism-cart before the logic-horse ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...

THIS.

Maybe it’s the ~3 years I’ve spent analysing and writing about the online response to the Depp v Heard trial talking here, but I’m really not sure another series of Johnny Depp puff pieces is the journalism we need right now

I 🩷 the DMRC

Ned's new paper, The Art of the (Platform) Deal, can be found here: ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wj....

🎤 A new episode of Read Them Sideways is now available with host @katemfitzgerald.bsky.social and @nedwatt.bsky.social, discussing Ned's new paper and the future of fact-checking on the back of Meta's policy changes. 🎤 open.spotify.com/episode/5FUI...

Ten years ago today, Donald Trump announced his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2016 United States presidential election. To mark the occasion, the Read Them Sideways team came together to record a roundtable episode of 10 Years of Trumpism. open.spotify.com/episode/6PoX...

Congratulations to PhD candidate, @jiarut.bsky.social, for her two new articles in June! 🎉 The first is a solo authored paper, "Broadcasting your virtual self: Exploring the authenticity construction and subjectivity of VTubers in China" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

they’re transvestigating the new pope

Wonderful to see another excellent @qutdmrc.bsky.social PhD student reach her final seminar milestone – @kkasianenko.bsky.social with a thesis on cosmopolitan responses to the Russian war on Ukraine. 🇺🇦 🫶

The ideas around “neutrality” and “bias” have done so much damage in the mainstream media. These ideas only work in one direction—against the left—and result in people in the industry who personally identify as left-leaning overcompensating and doing the right’s work for them

Relevantly to International Trans Day of Visibility, the new Read Them Sideways episode discusses recent changes to the Meta hate speech policies, with a particular focus on transgender and queer people. Listen to hear @lucinda-nelson.bsky.social lend her expertise! open.spotify.com/episode/5Fhb...

I’m also reminded of how perpetrators of sexual violence use claims of incompetence or confusion to get away with violence. It benefits fascists to keep their incompetent actors in the public eye for similar reasons. A lot of people believe you can only be evil if you do it on purpose.

I’m already feeling deeply grateful to the renters who I have had the chance to interview so far - each one with such interesting stories and perspectives. If you’re a renter and you’ve got experience using ‘RentTech’, I’d love to speak with you too. More details and contact form here:

The real MeToo “cancel culture” was what happened to the women and other victims who came forward. They were retraumatized, harassed, humiliated, sued, fired, and blacklisted. Then they were the subject of a revisionist history that MeToo went “too far” and deserved a reactionary backlash

The idea that there should be a public debate about the appropriate medical care for a minuscule population of children remains one of the most absurd lies that these liberal transphobes, NYT edit board included, tell themselves. No there shouldn’t! It’s not an appropriate matter for public debate!

I ran a “bake your thesis” (or more accurately, “decorate a cupcake like your thesis”) competition with @lynrose.bsky.social at the @qutdmrc.bsky.social summer school this week and everyone smashed it! Here’s to more silly fun times ✨

This list is mostly Black women. It's clear that the entire anti-DEI project is just neo-segregation. It's the same reason they only targeted Black women at Harvard. They don't believe people of color or women should have any positions of power. www.aol.com/federal-heal...

This is rapidly becoming a @kattenbarge.bsky.social stan account

It’s going off outside Tim Nicholl’s office right now. The trans community will not accept these disgraceful attacks. This is the crowd at 9:30am off the back of one tweet late last night. More actions to come.

Defamation cases don’t always end in favor of the truth. Remember, Amber Heard lost one for saying “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” The response to the trial alone proved the veracity of her statement and she still lost.

A lot of people (especially but not limited to men) are very clear that they don’t think victims of sex crimes should be allowed to talk about it publicly unless they can win a criminal court case, which is exceedingly rare for sex crimes

Hard to overstate just how much of the tech industry’s horrifically dystopian present grew right out of its transparently misogynistic past

Read this whole thread re: #Meta's changes! I have a whole paper on how user reports can be gamed to silence marginalised voices and let me tell you: the move to focus on flags is not good, esp if coupled with not bothering about racist and transphobic abuse. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Here’s me being cranky about Meta, again: www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01...

"housing instability is a major barrier to people getting politically involved and having the capacity to wage organized resistance against systems of oppression for liberation" such a great interview with Kamau Walton on housing justice x prison abolition- criticalresistance.org/resources/is...

If Anita Bryant started her whole shtick right now she’d have 2 million Twitter followers and get shoved onto everyone’s feeds with explicit support from politicians and tech leaders

In case you’re interested in the weeds of how bad this is, this is a redline version of Meta’s formerly Hateful SPEECH now Hateful CONDUCT rule.

Meta has quietly removed major sections of its hate speech policy protecting LGBTQ people, people of color, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. Today’s alarming policy changes will allow anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and cease to protect LGBTQ users from being targeted with such attacks

Meta literally created a LGBTQ exception for calling someone mentally ill as an insult. You can't do it for any other group except LGBTQ people.

New year, same old Meta. Great article from @taylorlorenz.bsky.social. Always ambivalent about seeing the research from by book The Digital Closet (bit.ly/digitalcloset) continue to hold true. #LGBTQ #censorship #queerbooks www.usermag.co/p/instagram-...

It’s funny Zuck says “I started building social media to give people a voice” when in fact, he started building social media to publicly rate the hotness of undergrads.

Dark time to be working on content moderation, gender and sexuality www.wired.com/story/meta-i...