In contrast with Wikipedia’s mission to “set knowledge free,” Elon Musk's "competitor" Grokipedia represents “the use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge," @antisomniac.bsky.social writes. www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

Tough Conversations in Academia, episode #79: "It's fun to play with ChatGPT to see what it can do, but if your methodology section includes 'then we dumped the data into ChatGPT' and the study isn't *about* ChatGPT... that's not ideal, my dude." Stay tuned for #80 on the punctuating "right?"

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is one of many experiments designed to replace human-generated writing with LLMs. But Ryan McGrady says its defining feature is its use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge. Who is Grokipedia for, he asks, other than its owner?

I have a piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social today: With Grokipedia, Top-Down Control of Knowledge Is New Again Trying to consider the nature of the project and its vision of neutrality vs. @wikipedia.org's (without getting into e.g. article comparisons). www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is one of many experiments designed to replace human-generated writing with LLMs. But Ryan McGrady argues that its defining feature is its use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge. buff.ly/odvgs4q

Err @gizmodo.com FYI the headline/first line is incorrect on a basic factual level. Wales didn't lock anything. Another user entirely did that, and a few days before Wales got involved. gizmodo.com/wikipedia-ga...

I have a piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social today: With Grokipedia, Top-Down Control of Knowledge Is New Again Trying to consider the nature of the project and its vision of neutrality vs. @wikipedia.org's (without getting into e.g. article comparisons). www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is one of many experiments designed to replace human-generated writing with LLMs. But Ryan McGrady says its defining feature is its use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge. Who is Grokipedia for, he asks, other than its owner?

All headlines, even @mcsweeneys.net headlines, are 2017 headlines again. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-...

Doomer visions are fundamentally about language and persuasion, not maximizing paperclips. Very, very old challenges for humans, now wrapped in technical complexity that leads us to debate silly things like the subjective experience of bicycles instead of focusing on e.g. trust.

How long must we wait in the trajectory of slopular culture before the use of AI-generated Studio Ghibli portraits is intelligible as ironically funny?

I fell into the trap: starting with "please RT" ensures nobody RTs. Spencer still needs a few more survey responses. Help to shape an important tool!

Folks, I've made it. Namechecked by @caseynewton.bsky.social @kevinroose.com on Hard Fork! Well, ok, not so much by name as "some scholar who said...". But still maybe more exciting than the original quote.

Notes on Grokipedia: Trying to do "neutral encyclopedia" means defining neutrality. Wikipedia defines it as not a platonic ideal of balance or objective reality but faithfully and proportionally summarizing what the best sources say, without adding personal opinions or ideas. [1/9]

Recap of #WikiConferenceNA: Gun, Community, Leadership, Permission. rhododendrites.com/posts/WikiCo... It's too long for a recap, but I'm giving myself a pass on this one.

Here I am, posting to both bluesky and mastodon at the same time via Gobo, which also lets me organize a combined feed. (see previous post/toot)

Please RT! Critical discourse about social media frequently emphasizes the role (& opacity) of recommendation/filtering systems. My @idpiumass.bsky.social colleague @slane.bsky.social is developing a "loyal client" that aggregates your social media feeds & gives you control. He needs your help! 1/2

@404media.co is increasingly excellent. Not just deepfakes, scraping, surveillance, privacy, and Wikipedia, but also butt breathing. Don't let anyone dull your sparkle, 404.

As usual, @stephenharrison.com has a great community-focused take on the #WikiConferenceNA incident this weekend (something I say even when I'm not quoted in the article). slate.com/technology/2... @slate.com

“We have so many haters on Wikipedia,” Molly Stark Dean, a Wikipedian and conference organizer who was sitting in the front row, told Slate. “I was like, Which corner of the internet is this guy from?” slate.com/technology/2...

New short paper on "The Ethics of Accidental Vlogs" in M/C Journal today, written with my @idpiumass.bsky.social colleague Harshita Snehi. Accidental vlogs as in publicly visible videos for private/small audiences (esp. common in Hindi YouTube). journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mc...

SuperHamster has wiki games and wants to make/share wiki games #wikiConferenceNA

Sohom on the Kafkaesque struggle of trying to preserve your privacy through Tor on Wikipedia. Broadly disallowed and preemptively blocked, but supposedly possible to get an exception... But it's hard. #wikiConferenceNA

Wikipedia readers want more images - and more galleries! Wikipedia guidelines generally discourage galleries (not a fan of that guidance myself). This presentation is effectively about trying to cater to what readers want where wiki guidelines fail. #wikiConferenceNA

Noooo SJ. A defense of experimenting with bot edits that I like but noooo to appropriating/making silly a recent wiki meme about humans getting harassed/sued/jailed #wikiconferenceNA

Hopped out of #WikiConferenceNA during lunch to take a few pictures at the #nokings march in Manhattan. Steady, dense stream of people the whole short time I was there. Big police presence, no hint of drama. gj everyone.

One of the only areas of the new "integrate ai" push that I think is worth entertaining wrt wikipedia is in flagging potential problems (before or after they happen). We've done it for many years, after all. ToneCheck looks for WP:TONE issues and may be a good example #wikiConferenceNA

Lots of discussion - brainstormy but decidedly anxious discussion - at #wikiConferenceNA about this finding: human views of wikipedia are down 8% as bot traffic increases. diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/n...

This is community. This is what Wikipedia is about. People came together. To be there for one another. And people who wanted mental health help for the gunman, not vengeance (Gift Link) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/n...

Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and Laerdon Kim presenting a new interface tool to give people a chance to reword or reconsider when starting to veer a wikipedia discussion into counterproductive incivility. #wikiConferenceNA

Yesterday's #wikiConferenceNA drama probably not helping the arbitration committee's pitch to recruit new members this morning, but it's one of the most important, but largely thankless volunteer roles.

The second day of Wikiconference North America 2025 kicks off today with an enlightening and highly entertaining talk with longtime Wikipedia champion @craignewmark.bsky.social and @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social. Follow along as we post updates today! #wikiconferenceNA

A worthwhile #wikiConferenceNA observation I heard today (it's not mine): there are a lot of places where if someone rushed in with a gun, attendees would be shouting ~"kill him!" Or otherwise encouraging some kind of retaliatory violence. 1/2

Had the best of intentions of, um, "liveskying?" (is that the bsky version of livetweeting?) #WikiConferenceNA day 1, but it kind of started and ended with this. Programming canceled for today. Extended lunch. Some good conversations. Headed out to evening gatherings. Will try again tomorrow!

It looks like @nytimes.com thoughtfully retitled their article about the conference, which previously included something about "settling scores". www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/n...

I should consider myself lucky that this is the first gun incident I've actually encountered up close. I wouldn't have expected it at #wikiconferencena because it feels like just a small gathering of friends, but I also forget that Wikipedia is a big deal (and is attracting a lot of hate these days)

At #wikiconferencena a man pulled a gun on stage wearing a "non-offending pedophile" sign, aggrieved, seemingly, that wikipedia doesn't allow him to write about that subject. Disarmed by hero Wikipedians Pharos and Fuzheado and arrested.

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/