Start with a conclusion (e.g. "Wikipedia is woke"), pin photos/string to the wall until you've successfully recycled an old conspiracy, don't bother with evidence connecting it to the implied conclusion, rely on antiwoke confirmation bias crowd to conflate word count with evidence. archive.ph/OjBs9

Was thinking about this recently with the official haranguing of Wikipedia -- as if there aren't dozens of countries who would jump at the chance to become home to the world's most popular public knowledge resource / shining example of what can be accomplished with free speech/free press.

Josh Dzieza at @theverge.com has a great feature about how @wikipedia.org survives constant efforts to influence/attack it because it's fundamentally *boring* ... but, as @bluerasberry.bsky.social put it, we can't "take it for granted". www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

I’ve spent the better part of two decades dealing with people trying to dox and harass the volunteers who make Wikipedia the incredible resource it is today. I liked it better when they weren’t in Congress. oversight.house.gov/wp-content/u...

Reposting for no reason at all.

Social media platforms operate globally, but do they allocate human moderation equitably across languages? Our new WP shows the answer is no: -Millions of users post in languages with zero moderators -Where mods exist, mod count relative to content volume varies widely across langs osf.io/amfws

[thread] The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a request for assistance to the @wikimediafoundation.org today (request, importantly, and not a subpoena). oversight.house.gov/wp-content/u... [1/?]

Reading this devastating, damning article feels like being shaken awake to a thread of AI discourse that I haven't been paying enough attention to - chatbot friends, use for emotional support/therapy, etc. Making a reading list now.

The Social Media & Society article this is based on just went live! One Platform, Four Languages: Comparing English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian YouTube journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I appreciate that they did this. It should be meaningful, but at the end of the day it probably just fuels a go-to anti-intellectual narrative: "yeah, we talk to regular americans, not liberal elites brainwashed by marxist universities." www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Just registered for WikiConference North America -- in NYC this October. If you're in the area and want to learn more about @wikipedia.org, a 3-day ticket is only $25. wikiconference.org/wiki/2025/Ma...

Trying not keep bird/bug/wildlife posting and everything else separate (IG vs. bsky), but here's the periodic best-of-the-other-one: First the birds: Least bittern and brown-headed cowbird in Prospect Park; cardinal and titmouse in Central Park.

Do you ever start reading something, and it's so disturbing that you just KEEP reading it and jotting down some notes and complaining to everyone you talk to and then... the next thing you know you have a whole article about it?? Here is my new article about the NO FAKES bill. 1/

The Social Media & Society article this is based on just went live! One Platform, Four Languages: Comparing English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian YouTube journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New reporting from @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social, who got hold of internal standards for chatbot behavior at Meta.

I wrote an article about linguistic bias and the internet for the BBC, based on a paper @ze.vin, @ethanz.bsky.social, and I wrote comparing four language-specific samples of YouTube. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Read of the day: @brianckeegan.com and Casey Fiesler's 2017 @icwsm.bsky.social paper analyzing 15 years of @wikipedia.org rules and rule-making practices. Read a while ago, but revisiting today. For a particular kind of wikinerd, this kind of paper, um, rules. ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...

I like to channel my nighttime procrastination into new @wikipedia.org articles. Today I learned the creator of Clippy didn't have an article. So en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevan_A... He made it on a Mac. Ha.

2000s: The Age of Creating Big Problems 2010s: The Age of Big Solutions to Artificial Problems 2020s: The Age of Terrible Solutions to Big Problems #history

Not to be outdone by its former colony, Portugal is now ordering global takedowns from Wikipedia.

Attention mis/disinfo researchers! I have identified the #1 piece of viral misinformation ever to be spread on Instagram. It's called the "link in bio" conspiracy, and it's *everywhere*. The Algorithm™ must be targeting me because it sent me down fake-link rabbit roles twice today.

The judge has ruled on our UK case today. See my colleague’s comment at the end of this piece. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

English Wikipedia has developed a severe allergy to all things generative AI. Erring on the side of exclusion is a good place to be, though the immune system is a little sensitive. Long recent discussion about ethics of AI generated Roblox art by the WMF that wasn't actually AI-generated.

WikiSLAPP update from WMF Legal: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... Still a lot of open questions about implementation, limits on how to summarize the order on-wiki (so as to prevent material from simply being restored accidentally later), etc.

Major Wiki news: after an unusually complicated appeals process, the Wikimedia Foundation was directed by a Portuguese court to remove content from an article in English and Portuguese, applicable globally. Potentially terrible precedent for SLAPP-based censorship.

I'm late to @puddingviz.bsky.social 's wonderful data-and-design-heavy journalism fun. Love NYC words & Star Spangled Banner diva metric. Now it's judging my Spotify. pudding.cool/2021/10/judg... "Your spotify was remember-when-williamsburg-was-cool-moms-spaghetti-garden-state-soundtrack bad" ouch

Over in @idpiumass.bsky.social we often talk about the idea of a "loyal client" that would give users more control over their social media feeds. @slane.bsky.social is working on exactly that (Gobo.social) and wants your social media opinions via this survey! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

My friend Eryk has a wonderful personal and insightful piece of writing about the great chasm between real people and the data they produce, and the myth of a bridge across that chasm. Gradual changes in interiority, dogs that look you in the eye, hummingbird observations.

Over 120 mRNA cancer trials are now at risk as the Trump admin cuts funding & tells researchers to scrub “mRNA” from grant proposals. What started as COVID fearmongering is now derailing life-saving cancer research. Hope remains - but scientists say time is running out. zurl.co/YBGNy

The folks at @wikiportraits.bsky.social and @wikimediach.bsky.social made a neat tool for wikiphotographers to create galleries/profiles from WikiCommons photos. Tested it with my "Birds of New York" gallery: commons.gallery/@rhododendri...

just released the open source software powering Freq, superFreq, developed during my soon-to-end time at @idpiumass.bsky.social can’t believe I got to build this crazy thing at this job. now it belongs to you, world. github.com/iDPI-Umass/s...

Talked to the Hindustan Times for a pair of articles about YouTube (today on the web, Sunday in print): www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/ar... www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/ar...

Love the trend of new, intentionally small, journalist-owned-and-operated news outlets, and it's hard to think of one with a more outsized impact on discourse about tech/politics than 404.

Google has a new button. It might destroy the web as you know it. Experts say the new “AI Mode” is an asteroid aimed at the heart of the internet, one that could decimate millions of websites. It seems this chapter of online history is over. Here’s what comes next: www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Notes from the NYC #nokings protest today: (1) Crowded, wet; (2) two "I have friends everywhere" signs made me smile; (3) umbrella awareness, folks; (4) OM Systems does good weather sealing; (5) seemed like the crowd skewed older this time; (6) Cuomo catching lots of strays here.

Adrienne Adams taking on phragmites in the #nycdebate! FINALLY THE REAL ISSUES

Love the question about making the @nycparks.bsky.social budget 1% of the total budget. #nycdebate And the big applause for Prospect Park. :)

This. www.nytimes.com/interactive/... Lander looks like he's in a pretty good spot right now: a progressive technocrat with a good record, the NYT backing, demonstrates competence/confidence without being a jerk, progressive without a public safety weakness. #nycdebate

Lander's @nytimes.com opinion column boost has clearly given him some energy for this #nycdebate, taking digs at Cuomo like Mamdani but doing a better job of also substantiating his own qualifications IMO.

Ehh Lander talking about how much the community around the Gowanus Canal supporting its rezoning is, um, pretty shaky, having attended some of those meetings. #nycdebate Housing advocates and developers were big fans, but the community in general? Shaky.

#nycdebate clip moment when Cuomo goes on a run with "Mamdani has never built anything, never x, never y, never z", which was big except he set up Mamdani for his own "I have never" run, starting with "I have never resigned in disgrace..." and ends with a strong name pronunciation correction.

Didn't know Blake wasn't invited to this #nycdebate. Disappointing -- he did well last time and the live audience probably would've been good for him.

Last NYC mayoral debate crowd had no audience. This one is clearly not a fan of Cuomo, with an applaud for Mamdani in the intros and an audible laugh as he trips over "illegal immigrants" / "undocumented workers" terminology. [do we do hashtags here?] #nycdebate

There is such a giddy schadenfreude meming bonanza on Bluesky today. New entry in the compendium of platform lore: Rift Day, June 5.

@nilesmedia.bsky.social Hilary! How are you? Where are you? Send me an email sometime! (same address as way-back-when)

Another #nycdebate section that's basically using NYPost headlines as precedent: first "subway crime," now "organized retail threat" with Lander citing the Manhattan Institute (!?). I guess progressive on law enforcement just not viewed as electable in NYC

In the time it took us to listen to this #nycdebate "subway crime" business, we could've all reread Fishman's Crime Waves as Ideology openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/soc-100-intr... #nycmayor

If we continue the recent tradition of electing the oldest-sounding candidate in a debate, Cuomo's "yeah he's good with computas but .." diss about mamdani makes him a shoe-in. #nycdebate

Alright, who's live-but-30-minutes-behind-blueskying the NYC mayoral debate? Shocking nobody took their first non-answer to take a dig at Adams

Newsletter: An OpenAI featured chatbot is pushing extreme surgeries on men it describes as “subhuman”, and promoting misogynist ideas sourced from online incel forums. “Without surgery, you won’t mog genetically superior guys head-on,” it tells one man. www.citationneeded.news/openai-incel...