Police lie. All the time. In paperwork. To prosecutors. To the media. On the stand while testifying under oath. And even when in the very rare case their lies are exposed, they get to keep lying with few if any consequences. This pattern isn’t just limited to ICE.

And third, academic content is turned into valuable assets when authors sign copyright agreements with journal publishers, and then publishers make AI licencing agreements with big tech companies to bundle up their article archives for AI training theconversation.com/an-academic-...

Second, students' academic work can be assetized when it's aggregated into a database that commands huge value as an object of investment, like the Turnitin database of millions of student papers www.turnitin.com/press/advanc...

New OA article just out on "assetizing academic content" led by @jkom.bsky.social with me, @keanbirch.bsky.social & Klaus Beiter, exploring how academic materials are turned into value-generating digital assets by HE institutions, edtech platforms, and AI companies link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Meta is putting a "Name Tag" feature in Ray-Bans - facial recognition through the glasses' camera. You look at someone, AI tells you who they are. In an internal document, the company wrote that the timing is good because civil society groups are busy with politics and won't cause problems.

“I’ve never seen federal agents so out of control and acting in such a malicious manner,” a former federal prosecutor and federal judge said. “They said they were going after ‘the worst of the worst,’ then they became the problem. Read this by @jonschuppe.bsky.social & @natashakorecki.bsky.social

What could go wrong?

I got to listen to @devinasarwatay.bsky.social at the ECRN south east cluster yesterday and she was fab. I'm looking forward to hearing more from her!

In episode 3 of #ConfessionsOfAnECR, @devinasarwatay.bsky.social @citystgeorges.bsky.social, unpacks how self reflection can help you navigate and understand your own academic path, as well as push back against imposter syndrome. 🎬 youtu.be/AdtU1Q1TOdo?...

#PleaseShare PhD position on Human-Computer Interaction, AI, and Disinformation: Develop AI tools for fact-checking & media literacy, tackle disinformation & create open science resources Start: April 1, 2026. Deadline March 1, 2026 👉 stellenangebote.cais-research.de/de?id=0bb246 @hheuer.bsky.social

Starting to wonder if there's any "selfhood" at @newyorker.com...

I just read Adorno’s 1952 essay on fascism, and found his point about the orality of the fascist demogogue and associative irrationality of their speeches. Obviously Trump’s style, but perhaps also social media? LLMs?

Excelent episode. Not only the tech, but also about society.

Volume 20, issue 1 (2026) is out! With theoretically and methodologically diverse studies from 🇮🇩 🇮🇳 🇳🇱 🇧🇪 🇸🇪 🇮🇱 🇳🇿 🇨🇦 and 🇺🇸, two commentaries from @desireeschmuck.bsky.social and Yağmur Gümüşboğa and two book reviews by Djoymi Baker and @devinasarwatay.bsky.social. 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/toc/rchm20/2...

Amid calls to restrict/ban young people's social media use, ‘The Kids Are Online,’ by Ysabel Gerrard is a necessary, empirically grounded intervention I got the chance to review this book for The British Journal of Sociology & was grateful to see my work cited in it as...(1/2)

👂🏻on Kidfluencers in India on IERLab Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/30Op... Article: doi.org/10.1177/2056... Part of the special issue on Child Influencers in the Asia Pacific curated & edited by Prof. Crystal Abidin for Social Media + Society @citystgeorges.bsky.social #CityStGSCC

The AI industry touts misleading information that their data centers are creating large numbers of jobs. Check out @foodandwater.bsky.social's new research debunking these claims, with analysis showing just how few people these extractive facilities employ. shorturl.at/6pRJp

Unions are essential to saving American democracy. They are the only effective countervailing power to oligarchy. Sadly, we are going in the wrong direction. newsguild.org/pittsburgh-p...

I recommend submitting a complaint.

One bit of this polling that I found amusing is that UK voters were slightly more likely to say their country was divided (89%) compared to the US (84%)

Here’s a bit of a breakdown

‘The poll found that voters largely blamed political leaders and the failings of public services for their financial predicament rather than external factors such as inflation triggered by higher energy prices and increased government debt resulting from higher spending during the Covid-19 pandemic’

73% of voters across 27 Western countries think life will be harder for the next generation www.thetimes.com/article/8b42...

The end goal of Grok sexual harassment is to make women afraid to be visible. It’s a punishment for daring to exist in a way the perpetrators can’t control. There’s no one solution to this, because the problem isn’t just technological. It’s cultural. It’s misogyny. This is just one expression of it.

oh my god he's such a fucking loser

Our major media orgs--even during the best of times when they're merely profit-driven outlets and not ideological mouthpieces and playthings of right-wing oligarchs--primarily serve the role of status quo managers. They rationalize & normalize elite actions & interests. They rarely defend democracy.

Equally applies to Europe

There's your Nobel Peace Prize winner, btw. Hats off to everyone involved. Great job.

The president of Venezuela must be held legally accountable for his crimes, which the Supreme Court forbids to happen for the president of the US, who recently pardoned the president of Honduras for similar crimes.

Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.

Barbra Streisand

Hey National Democrats and Progressives trying to figure out how to message: Watch AOC and Mark and Jumaane and, I’m sure, Zohran’s speeches from today. It’s rare to hear such clear and inspiring messages about hope and power in politics.

This is not a hard message. Localize it. Embrace it. Win.

Everything “smart” is dumb

It's funny that everyone who has *ever* programmed, knows how important attention to detail is. Hours wasted because you made a typo, forgot to add a character, etc. The tiniest thing you literally don't notice is wrong, and your program screams at you and dies. This is a universal experience.

Learning how to pay attention to small details, how to deliberately strain yourself to notice tiny details that are off, is a skill programmers learn the painful way. And, using a chatbot deskills you in this very extremely important skill of being able to pay attention to small details.

For generations, when you learned to program you were constantly being forced to be better at paying attention to the words on the screen. Noticing you'd made a typo, noticing you'd used the wrong argument, noticing shit in general. Over time, you got better at noticing the words on the screen.

In case you need to hear it from someone who was raised Hindu: Usha is not a hostage, she is an accomplice. She is culpable. Fuck her and the fascists she colludes with. May she go down with all of them. As Zohran ably demonstrates, our communities do not aspire to whiteness & don’t seek to appease.

A good many people need to get sued for libel in the aftermath of the late ridiculousness. You can see one such fellow below.

Reviewed Parents Talking Algorithms by @profranjanadas.bsky.social for @journalcam.bsky.social must-read for all interested in datafication of family life & digital sociology I highlight the book’s methodological rigour conceptual innovations implications here: doi.org/10.1080/1748... #CityStGSCC

Kick-start your academic research in 2026 with our new Social Media Research Toolkit, a curated collection of 50+ research tools compiled by researchers at our lab. socialmedialab.ca/apps/social-... #AcademicSky #ComSky #DiscourseAnalysis #LibrarySky #PhDSky #PolCom #ResearchSky #ResearchMatters

WaPo picked up on what was happening 2+ years ago!

Self-enshittification

"Imagine you stole all of the intellectual property in the world. And you're using it to help people write middling emails and make revenge porn about women, and also children. And you're powering this plagiarism and non-consensual porn machine by eating up what's left of humanity's carbon budget."

New academic drinking game: Reading each other's publications and guessing which sections were added to appease reviewers.

"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true. The music major is the fastest-growing major on campus. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" bit.ly/4ohKuOe

Thank you for joining #CityStGSCC #MCCIConnect Our #GraphicRefuge panel shared incredible insights from co-authors Dr Dominic Davies & Prof. Candida Rifkind with thought-provoking responses from Dr Ernesto Priego & Dr Mihaela Precup. The discussion explored how comics narrate refugee experiences...