Want to hear about how to build better feeds? Join @mattmotyl.bsky.social and I at 11:00 ET today!

Want to know how we can make social media a better place with fewer annoying and/or harmful content? Check out this brand new report I had the honor of co-authoring with a bunch of fellow experts on social media recommendation systems at the Knight-Georgetown Institute!

Following the latest wave of tech layoffs in recent weeks, more employees have shared their exceptional performance evaluations conducted in the weeks prior to being laid off on the alleged basis of poor performance. I share more on this in my latest YouTube video. youtu.be/iJPBsL4w-U0?...

It was a small trial, but a new vaccine against pancreatic cancer shows promise. Now would be a good time to increase funding for cancer research instead of the opposite! www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

The tech layoffs continue, and the companies are trying to present them as performance-based. There's just one problem: they're not actually performance-based. I wrote a piece summarizing some of the data on this and telling my story from back in 2022. open.substack.com/pub/mattmoty...

I interviewed the former head of youth safety at Meta, Twitter, and Google, @vaishnavi.bsky.social , on how to best promote online safety for youth. If you're curious, our conversation is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6096...

I interviewed @kurtjgray.bsky.social on some of his fascinating research on using AI to understand morality and to moderate generative AI tool output. Oh, and surveying dead people, having sex with robots, and a bit on his latest popular book on outrage in politics www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhBr...

One of my friends runs a political psychology YouTube channel and invited me to come on to discuss the role of social media in activism, and whether it amounts to more the slacktivism. Check it out here: youtu.be/y-3ErmkatX8?...

I interviewed clinical psychologist and professor Christopher Ferguson about his research on how social media affects the well-being and mental health of teenagers. I finally found time to edit out some of our particularly bad jokes to spare you all; see the good stuff here: youtu.be/_koKKVAF5_Q

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger is reporting Russian actors made bomb threats at some polling locations. Investigation says threats non-credible. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p... Get out and vote, folks.

Some of my election & civic integrity tech, political science, and social psych friends and I will be livestreaming our own election and social media monitoring war room analogous to the war rooms we worked on at some of the world's biggest tech companies. Starts at 3p PT youtube.com/live/64dQ1er...

My Super Bowl has arrived. Will there be more or fewer tackles and fumbles today than during that other Super Bowl -- the one with lots of guys wearing tight pants and chasing after a misshapen ball?

In part two of our series, Dr. @mattmotyl.bsky.social and I explore practical steps to address the challenges of social media’s impact on mental health. If you care about #digitalwellbeing, join the conversation and help support teens online! www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGHa...

Curious about how social media impacts mental health? Dr. @mattmotyl.bsky.social and I dive into the research and noise in part 1 of our series. Join us unpacking this critical and misunderstood topic for those in the #digitalwellbeing space. www.youtube.com/watch?v=klas...

After the second assassination attempt on Trump along with stories of people like @noupside.bsky.social being targeted by ideological extremists, I put together this brief video on political polarization, social media, and the rising acceptability of political violence. youtu.be/REpGv3POEwo?...

Is generative AI really hijacking democracy? In this video, I review the sensational fears some have expressed about the impact of GenAI on elections, and examine the role its played in the 50+ elections that have already happened in 2024. youtu.be/3IW4qBmj7g0

Is all the sensationalizing of the potentially catastrophic harms of impressive genAI tools distracting us from addressing the real threats to elections? I offer my take in my latest piece (with Spencer Gurley) at Tech Policy Press today. www.techpolicy.press/dont-let-gen...

Good read from Del from the perspective of T&S as preventative healthcare. Got a long road ahead to get all these systems in place here, but incrementally the goal is continuous improvement.

I created a data visualization of the tech layoffs broken out by month and company. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Id...

What are the most politically polarized countries in the world? How has this changed since 1900? youtu.be/nkocAXiqanE

🚀 New Report! Are meaningful online connections rising or falling? It's complicated. 🔹 60% of US adults report meaningful connections. 🔹 Older, educated, & wealthy = more connections. 🔹 Facetime/WhatsApp > Pinterest/YouTube. Dive in: psychoftech.substack.com/p/meaningful...

Affective polarization has been increasing for decades. Here's my latest piece on how we are moving from political animosity and insults to political violence towards all, not just public officials mattmotyl.substack.com/p/how-polari...

Happy 4th of July, folks! mattmotyl.substack.com/p/fixing-the...

🚨 In 2023, social media giants laid off thousands of trust & safety experts. In 2024, the layoffs continue. The result? A surge in harmful content. Read more on the consequences and what it means for the future: open.substack.com/pub/mattmoty... #SocialMedia #TrustAndSafety

One of the most ambitious regulatory regimes, 🇪🇺 #DSA, gives extraordinary power to act to ensure platform algorithms platforms ensure #electoralintegrity 👉 www.techpolicy.press/we-worked-on... @jeffallen.bsky.social @mattmotyl.bsky.social @techpolicypress.bsky.social @johnnyryan.bsky.social

Real-time working on Miro boards is my ADHD brain's kryptonite. Why, yes, just show me a screen with a bunch of interesting questions, a dozen colorful cursors moving around, a dozen people writing interesting thoughts on sticky notes, and then having someone talking in the background.

"If we’re going to make the online world safe for young people, we can’t just go in guns blazing with strong beliefs and a one size fits all solution - we really need to make sure that we’re sensitive to having our minds changed by data" #digitalwellbeing www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My naive American observation on my first trip to Europe (particularly the Munich airport): It is extraordinarily quiet here. There aren't dozens of competing voices shouting over the loudspeaker system. It's so much more peaceful than basically any American airport I've been through.

I'm on my way to Brussels to present some of my work on data transparency and safety on internet platforms at the European Digital Media Observatory. I'm super excited about that, but I'm dually excited because this is my first trip to Europe.

Did social media have a nightmare year (for users)? I examined changes in users' experiences across 20 of the largest platforms over the past 12 months and wrote about the findings here. psychoftech.substack.com/p/how-have-s...

How is social media use related to loneliness? In my latest analysis of the USC Neely Center’s Social Media Index survey, I shed light on this question psychoftech.substack.com/p/social-tec...

Do you want to know the most (and least) effective ways to protect children’s safety online? We at the Integrity Institute assembled this guide on protecting children's safety, that may be helpful in preparing for the upcoming Senate hearings with tech CEOs. integrityinstitute.org/blog/child-s...

Who uses AI chat tools? Why do they use them? Do users find these tools useful? Harmful? If these questions keep you awake at nights, come check out my latest analysis of data from a nationally representative panel survey of ~9900 US adults. psychoftech.substack.com/p/tracking-c...

"Short term cost cutting can be very expensive. Billion-dollar regulatory and legal fines make headlines and dent company coffers." Excellent reflection and perspective shared by @mattmotyl.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/the-unbearab...

Here @mattmotyl.bsky.social and I lay out the business case for trust and safety (also known as integrity) work. T&S is not just about dodging monumental government fines, it's also essential to ad-based business models, and for long-term customer satisfaction and growth, without which.....

Big Tech chose to disproportionately lay-off experts in combating harmful content on their platforms in order to save a buck. In this piece, @geewiz.bsky.social and I document how extraordinarily expensive this decision was and continues to be in the long-run www.techpolicy.press/the-unbearab...

How has social media use changed over the past 6 months? How have user experiences changed in that time? Are some platforms improving? I answer all of these in my latest report on the Social Media Index on substack. open.substack.com/pub/psychoft...

Nearly 90% of those polled (in a sample from 16 countries) stated that they wanted governments and regulators to address hate speech and disinformation on social media platforms. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Billy Brady: Content algorithms optimize engagement by exploiting learning biases (favoring prestigious, ingroup, moralized, and emotional content)

I'm attending the Psychology of Technology Institute conference in LA the next few days, and I'd like to livetweet it on here. Is livetweeting here liveblueskying? Or, live-BSing, for short?

Fascinating and important new research shows that virtually all large language models exhibit social identities biases, like liking fellow group members and expressing hostility towards people in other groups. This can be reduced by removing biased training data arxiv.org/pdf/2310.158...

74% of the most viral misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war on X (Twitter) were shared by verified blue checkmark accounts. variety-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/variety....