Recent headlines about Jimmy Kimmel Live! being pulled after FCC pressure show why we should talk about gov’t influence over speech. Join #FOSO2025 (Oct 28–29) as experts unpack “jawboning” & new legal protections for free expression. cdt.org/event/the-fu...#FOSO2025

🎮 How can we mainstream trust & safety in online games? Join the Center for Democracy & Technology, NYU Stern Center, and AU’s @csint-au.bsky.social on Sept 29 (in DC & virtual) for expert panels on building safer, more inclusive gaming spaces. 📍 NYU DC | 9am–1pm ET cdt.org/event/mainst...

The problem with billionaires isn’t how much money they have but instead how much power they wield. A lot of Americans won’t see Jimmy Kimmel’s return on TV because their local ABC stations are owned by MAGA corporations. It’s notable how billionaires flexing their power is now out in the open.

Please join us (September 29) for Mainstreaming Trust and Safety in Online Games. Organized by @cdt.org, NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, and @csint-au.bsky.social Register for the livestream here: www.eventbrite.com/e/mainstream... #gaming #trustandsafety

Really looking forward to attending the Trust and Safety Research Conference next week. I will be presenting research we did at @cdt.org on how content moderation (including the use of large language models) work in low-resource languages in the Majority World. #TSRConf #contentmoderation #LLMs

“Chrome’s cheating tool exemplifies Big Tech’s continuing gold rush approach to AI: launch first, consider consequences later and let society clean up the mess.”

Tamil speakers face a double bind online: too much moderation of their speech & too little protection from harassment. In @thehindu.com, CDT’s @aliyabhatia.bsky.social + @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social explore why moderation in Tamil is broken — & what platforms can do to fix it. www.thehindu.com/opi...

First piece in @thehindu.com! @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social and I write about the double standard Tamil speaking users face on social media, at once facing over-moderation of their speech and also under-moderation particularly of gender and caste-based attacks. Read: www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...

Good to see that our op-ed in the @thehindu.com was published today. It was written by @aliyabhatia.bsky.social and myself and based on research we did at the @cdt.org on social media moderation of user generated content in Tamil. www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...

Happy to announce our call for applications for the @cdt.org Non-Resident Fellows program (2026-27). You can find more information here: cdt.org/about/fellows/ Applications are due by October 6, 2025.

🚨 NEW BLOG led by CDT Intern @adinawa.bsky.social, with CDT’s Ruchika Joshi & @mluria.bsky.social, explores dark patterns in conversational AI — subtle design tricks in tools like ChatGPT, Replika & Character.AI that influence spending, attention, & data sharing:

“Technology firms behind artificial intelligence–based note-taking software — marketed to therapists as a time-saving administrative tool — have quietly included provisions in their terms and conditions that allow patients’ therapy records to be sold and manipulated to train other AI applications.”

How do content moderation systems treat Indigenous languages online? CDT’s research report from @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social dives into how platforms moderate Quechua, a widely spoken but low-resource Indigenous language of South America—& reveals linguistic inequities. cdt.org/insights/mod...

It’s not every day that UX researcher whistleblowers testify before the Senate. Yesterday, two former Meta researchers, Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, shared their concerns with safety research for Meta VR products, and more broadly within Meta. So how does UX research move on from here? 🧵

In this short piece, I lean on embodied cog sci to argue that we should refuse & resist llms in education (pp. 53-58) unesdoc.unesco.org/in/documentV... "the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care & humility are fostered & mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions"

Looking forward to presenting our research on social media content moderation for low-resource and indigenous languages with @aliyabhatia.bsky.social at @opentechinstitute.bsky.social 15th anniversary. www.newamerica.org/conference/o...

Before you read this infomercial, maybe check out how the state of Pennsylvania denied licensing to this outfit because "“There is no compelling evidence that Unbound Academic’s proposed programs will enable students to meet academic standards." www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia...

In Opinion | “Marketed as conversational agents, chatbots are becoming de facto digital therapists for many teens," Ryan K. McBain writes in a guest essay. He argues that we can be proactive in shaping how A.I. supports millions of teens — but “the clock is ticking.”

New from 404 Media: crime-awareness app Citizen is using AI to generate alerts, and then pushing them without any human involvement. The AI is publishing incorrect info, gory details, personal data. Only fixed after live. Comes as Citizen laid off 13 union workers www.404media.co/citizen-is-u...

Two Brennan Center studies show that racist attitudes are linked to distrust in the 2020 election results and support for the January 6 insurrection. bit.ly/3Jqxp6A

"It's colonisation 101, going for us as a resource [but] failing to invest in understanding the tangible and intangible elements of our cultural priorities," www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

To explain this photo a bit more: back then, most programming was done on paper (sometimes on special coding sheets), then punched onto cards/tape, then fed into a mainframe to be tested (& if necessary debugged). Counterintuitively, needing LESS computer time was the mark of a better programmer!

Our own study of multilingual AI finds that these systems are trained on mostly English-lang data, machine translated speech, or data scraped from the web which doesn't represent how people speak. Translation is an art form. AI is creating six-fingered mimicry of language: cdt.org/insights/los...

Algorithmic wage discrimination was first documented in app-controlled ride-hail and food-delivery work. Read more on how surveillance pay works and where it is deployed in the U.S. economy, along with recommendations to ensure fairness in setting workers’ pay: equitablegrowth.org/how-artifici...

“Here’s the problem with being awash in data and inferences: It never stays limited to any innocent or well-intentioned purpose. It almost immediately becomes a tempting weapon for those who want to wield power over a society, with or without consent from the people in that society.”

BREAKING: ICE Adds Random Person to Group Chat, Exposes Details of Manhunt in Real-Time 🔗 www.404media.co/ice-adds-ran...

I’m grateful to Bue Wongbandue’s family for telling his story to me. It took courage, and they didn’t want attention. www.reuters.com/investigates...

As usual, the @FT seems to be the most clear-eyed newspaper on the AI boom/bubble. www.ft.com/content/cfab...

“I felt an immediate knot in my stomach when I walked into a restroom at a Yellowstone lodge and forgot to take my glasses off. There’s an easy-enough fix: Make sure you take the glasses off anywhere you shouldn’t be recording.” 🙃

¿Qué impacto tiene la Inteligencia Artificial (IA) en las lenguas indígenas de México? El Foro ‘IA+Lenguas’ reunió activistas digitales para exigir tecnologías alineadas con sus valores.

This from @tressiemcphd.bsky.social hit me over the head like a mallet of truth. This is the thing. This is what I’ve been trying to warn people about perfectly crystallized. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/o...

Baltimore Mayor Scott response on Trump: I think it's very notable that each and every one of the cities called out by the President has a black mayor, and most of those cities are seeing historic lows in violent crime…

Please join us! A webinar in collaboration between @globalvoices.org Voices and the @cdt.org with @ameriqo.bsky.social, Emma Vadillo Quesada, Nicaela Leon Coico, and Marco Antonio Martínez; organized by Eddie Avila. August 14, 2025, at 11 am EDT/3pm UTC/5pm CET globalvoices.org/2025/08/08/l...

"Meta has a controversial agreement with telecommunications companies that restricts some users on cheaper data plans to using specific apps and sites including those from Meta." Sounds like FreeBasics for internet access all over again. restofworld.org/2025/colombi... #AI #aiedtech #freebasics

the enshittification of education is underway restofworld.org/2025/colombi...

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

A group of global civil society organizations have placed the US on a watchlist for urgent concern over the health of its civic society, alongside Turkey, Serbia, El Salvador, Indonesia and Kenya.

CDT’s Director of our Free Expression Project @kateruane.bsky.social joins legal, tech, & policy experts for a panel – "Verifying the Future: Kids Age Regulation, SCOTUS, and AI Boundaries” – hosted by the Congressional Internet Caucus. Details below!

When apps collect sensitive identifying information like users’ images or drivers’ licenses to comply w/ age verification laws, they risk this kind of breach, which endangers privacy, safety, and dignity. It also chills everyone’s desire to engage in all but the most anondyne conversations online.

"If you’re pasting in contracts, asking legal questions, or asking [the chatbot] for strategy, you're not getting legal advice…You’re generating discoverable evidence. No attorney-client privilege. No confidentiality. No ethical duty. No one to protect you."

How do social media content moderation systems work for low-resource and indigenous languages of the Global South/Majority World? Please join us on August 7! #contentmoderation #LLMs #AI #NLP #languages

“When AI ‘models encounter a word they don’t know or that doesn’t exist in another culture, they will simply make up a translation,’ explains @aliyabhatia.bsky.social, a senior policy analyst at CDT, where she researches issues related to multilingual AI.” fortune.com/asia/202...

It’s hard to reconcile these pieces with the fact of how little regard these companies have for users. Right now the tech is like a car with no seat belts or brakes and a steering wheel that only works sometimes.

🤷🏿‍♂️

How do content moderation systems work in low-resource and indigenous languages of the Majority World (Global South)? That’s what our 18 month long study looked at in Maghrebi Arabic, Swahili, Tamil, and Quechua. We found the systems often failed users: #contentmoderation cdt.org/insights/con...

It. Can’t. “Apologize.”

Though much remains uncertain (e.g. outcomes of lawsuits re: canceled grants), it is clear that U.S. gov funding for science — especially science that intersects w/ concerns about human flourishing — is going to be significantly diminished in coming years. Here are a few things we can do to help:

Over 18 months, CDT studied content moderation in four low-resource languages—Maghrebi Arabic, Kiswahili, Tamil, and Quechua—across South Asia, North/East Africa, and South America. cdt.org/insights/con...

App Stores and social media are claiming they can't figure out how to stop nudify apps on their services, while simultaneously allowing people to buy ads for "nudify" and "undress" as keywords.

California schools are paying millions for the AI detection tool Turnitin, but the tech often makes mistakes and the company requires schools to allow them to keep students’ papers forever. themarkup.org/artificial-i...