Saw this great tactic to get the word out there by beating social media’s own algorithms….

Pritzker: "He wants to militarize major cities because he wants us to get used to the idea of troops on the streets. I believe he's gonna post people outside of polling places and if he needs to in order to control those elections, he'll assume control of the ballot boxes & count the votes himself"

"If we Europeans do not wake up and say, ‘We want to take back control of our democracies,’ I can tell you this: within 10 years [...] we will be a continent, like many others, of conspiracy theorists, extremists, noise and fury." defenddemocracy.eu/macron-democ...

you’re never more than 10 feet away from someone texting “lol” with a completely expressionless face

Let's be clear: no one should be taking medical advice from the man who told Americans to inject bleach. To moms worried about the Tylenol they took while pregnant: you deserve better than being RFK Jr's scapegoat. And to the autism community: you are loved exactly as you are.

There's a wrong way and a right way to report this

Hang on?? I was assured this was a both sides problem??

Worth reading: "Esotericism, the New Right, and Academic Scholarship" by Julius Strube 👉 brill.com/view/journal... in Aries Special Issue: Far-Right Politics and the Study of Esotericism (2025) 👉 brill.com/view/journal...

“Modern political journalism must identify memetic warfare tactics early and disrupt coordinated manipulation before mass adoption.”

lol

Cynthia @milleridriss.bsky.social observes there was bipartisan condemnation of Charlie Kirk's murder from political leaders. "But on social media, we also had a lot of celebration from the left and we had calls for civil war from the right... Those are really dangerous trends." bit.ly/46IYpHo

I've written this post, and then I've deleted it. As a public scholar, I walk the line of commentary and inviting trouble. I don't believe I've done it, but in these times, I don't know. This is my diagnostic of internet culture, algorithms, & violence. bythewaysocial.substack.com/p/btw-social...

“A democratic society needs people in Ezra Klein’s position to treat Charlie Kirk’s anti-democracy stances as disqualifying, rather than pretend they’re just another policy opinion…” @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social w/an excellent critique of Kirk hagiography www.arcdigital.media/p/ezra-klein...

Trump: everyone in the US died from drugs last week Reporter: [nods] Trump: so we must murder on the high seas Reporter: [nods] Trump: I caught Trix rabbit once Reporter: [nods] Trump: the cock on that bunny Reporter: [nods] Trump: bigger than you think Headline: Trump Policy Seeks To Save Lives

This looks great

Three years ago I published my book on Mediatized Fan Play on how fans’ playful practices have come to shape digital culture more broadly from politics to 4chan. Never would I have imagined the moment we are in now where it is also (seemingly) a defining feature of extremist violence

Hello, news media (and several podcasters I usually really enjoy listening to)? I think this call is for you

We see this again and again in violent attacks. The legitimization isnmt primarily ideological, but a fan-based, performative extremism bound by irony and nihilism

We cannot have "respectful debate" when the topic of debate is whether certain people deserve rights, including their right to exist as themselves, just because of their identity.

I’ve youtubed so many wood working videos that the algorithm is serving me sperm donor and men’s clothing adds

Oh honey, no

Hate speech fuels stochastic terrorism risk. "Stochastic terrorism has been defined as the incitement of a violent act through public demonization of a group or individual.” Amman and Malloy (2021) www.jstor.org/stable/27073...

And I want to be clear about this: because of Elon's revenue sharing model on Twitter, these people are making literally tens of thousands of dollars a year off inciting political violence. He is actively paying them enormous sums in exchange for their incitement.

These are calls for mass political violence, against all Democrats. They openly call for the bombing of "Democrat" cities and for the jailing or killing of Democratic politicians. They are from some of the most influential voices in right-wing politics. Will anyone say anything?

When every extremism expert and historian on bluesky is telling you not to celebrate political violence, maybe just don’t do it.

what a humiliating way for don jr. to find out his dad sends birthday cards.

They could make it respond to medical questions by saying, "ask a doctor, not a chatbot", but that would undermine their value proposition and hurt profits, so this will probably keep happening.

And if he can create the perception that vaccine skepticism is more widespread than it actually is, then he can exploit another human tendency--the tendency for people to conform to what they perceive the norms to be, rather than what the norms actually are. 2/

He's exploiting what sociologists call the availability heuristic: the more people hear about something, the more common they assume it to be. If he can spew vaccine skepticism all over the airwaves, then he can create the perception that such skepticism is more widespread than it is. 1/

I’m happy to report that I introduced Danish radio audiences to @timmiller.bsky.social and Tommy Vietor from @podsaveamerica.crooked.com laughing at Alex Jones’ rant about Donald’s canckles on the @thebulwark.com. Sometimes research communication be like that

In the days after last week's Minneapolis shooting, I've been continually haunted by the shooter's video and the nihilistic contagion that seems to spread in mass shooter fandom communities. I spoke to @alexbnewhouse.bsky.social about how to process this terrible phenomenon w/o helping perpetuate it

@jonfavs.bsky.social we need to tall about AI. I beg you to stop using it lige it’s a search engine 🙏🏻 It’s a probability conversation machine and it has nothing to do with news or facts. Okay that’s all, love PSA, bye

No matter what happens they can never take this away from us

Would you entertain using a different term for AI mistakes that doesn’t anthropomorphize it? @annamillsoer.bsky.social and I wrote about why: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I checked the first dozen or so references by hand, and then followed up. Anyway, do tell me more about how LLMs function just like search engines and how tools like Perplexity, because they search the web to add to their context window, obviously don't hallucinate.

The task, for the curious, was to make suggestions for readings for my tech ethics and policy course. I had just updated a list I made last year, and wondered if Perplexity would come up with similar suggestions. Here's how it went. Screenshots of partial prompt plus first 2 (fake) citations:

*whispers* LLM’s are not search engines. None of them. Spread the word

My video about how LLMs are not search engines has led to many, MANY comments telling me that I should be using Perplexity. Some insisting that Perplexity does not hallucinate. Out of a list of 26 papers it just provided me (in "Research" mode) 4 were real. FOUR. 85% hallucination rate.

White supremacist tropes and ironic viral jokes illustrate the administration's project of redefining who belongs in the United States.

Together with Mikkel Bækby Johansen, she contributed to an important discussion on: “The Violence of Online Conspiracy Theories: The Case of the Harassment Campaign against Uncle Shrimp.”

📌Our colleague @linenybro.bsky.social from the University of Copenhagen presented the #SMIDGEProject results at the NordMedia 2025 in Odense, Denmark. Discover more about the conference: nordmedianetwork.org/nordmedia-co... #NORDIS #NordMedia2025

I think in an ideal world we'd dramatically reduce use of the term "AI" or "artificial intelligence" in favor of something more specific, like LLM or machine learning.

Relatedly I think journalism could maybe use stronger professional style norms around not anthropomorphizing the computer systems we report on/reference in our writing.

i.e. I don't think we're helping our readers by describing an LLM as "thinking" or "believing" something. I think these are often inadvertent tics/shorthand for commonsense understandings of how computers work ("the printer said it's out of ink!"), but the stakes are much much higher now.

I can’t believe it took this long for someone to mock him this way. It’s such an obvious yet hilarious strategy. I hope he’s livid on his gold toilet.

The Conservatism of Emoji: Work, Affect, and Communication, by Luke Stark @lukestark.bsky.social and Kate Crawford @katecrawford.bsky.social / Social Media + Society - Sage journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

You see, Haidt will say, banning phones at school really helped! He will be wrong, but quoted.

Some good news: Teen rates of depression and suicides are down. They remain stable among older Americans. Haidt is going to have a hard time whitewashing this. www.npr.org/sections/sho...

*raises hand* I wrote a book about this. Fandom is sometimes more about the games we play with each other than the fandom object itself