Theme song of the modern age, been running through my head every time I read a new headline: youtu.be/7YvAYIJSSZY?...

I wrote this thread up into an article and revived my old Medium account to host: medium.com/@katestarbir... I explain how Bannon's comments of "ICE surrounding polls" are a strategic attempt to exploit our outrage to advance his goals of voter suppression — and how we can redirect that attack.

🚨BREAKING: Steve Bannon said Tuesday that the federal government is planning to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to patrol polling stations during this year’s midterm elections. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

The right-wing bullshit machine is operating at full steam & across all cylinders today, strategically framing the horrific ICE killing of a MN woman to defend/bolster their political aims. For exampe, Trump's message (below) will shape how his supporters (willfully mis)interpret the video evidence.

The order creates an Justice Department task force to challenge state AI laws, and directs the Commerce Department to pull future broadband funding from states that pass “onerous” legislation. www.wired.com/story/trump-...

Recently accepted at ICWSM: arxiv.org/abs/2512.06129 (w/ @kayladuskin.bsky.social, @katestarbird.bsky.social, and @emmaspiro.bsky.social) We look at how algorithmic feeds affect Twitter account visibility. More visible accounts: -Are agitators -Get attention from Elon Musk -Are not legacy verified

New research on Twitter (right before rebranding to X) shows right leaning accounts got outsized visibility from the algorithm & suggests this bias stemmed from different content production techniques (more sensational, outrage-bait) and from direct interaction w/ the new king of the platform: Musk.

"there is little reason to doubt what the aim [of the massive investment in AI] is: to embed knowledge in machines—knowledge that previously belonged to the people working in these domains." 🧵

In the Trump administration’s war on truth, they have attempted to silence and intimidate those who stand in their way. In their latest attack, they try to strategically frame fact-checking as “censorship.” But fact-checking isn’t censorship, it’s speech. www.poynter.org/news-release...

Dean Jackson does a great job here connecting three major stories from this week to the now years-long "'censorship' greivance fantasy" crafted by right-wing conspiracy theorists and embraced by the Trump regime and its supporters: www.techpolicy.press/white-house-...

Reupping this since it looks like X is ab to get hit with a wave of fines under the Digital Services Act and JD Vance is already tweeting about how not complying with transparency and data access laws in the market you operate in is "censorship". Get caught up: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/regu...

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

This is what government censorship actually looks like: defunding entire fields, deporting researchers, and quite effectively chilling speech that helps people understand how our information systems are being exploited and calls out powerful people and platforms for their bullshit.

For the last decade, the pervasive spread of bullshit & manipulation of online platforms have been widely recognized societal concerns. Now non US citizens studying those subjects can be labeled “censors” & denied visas or deported from the US. Censorship, indeed. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Absolutely devastating account of the CSU's $17 million capitulation to ChatGPT, from a fellow faculty member watching it happen www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

UW CIP postdoc @mertcanbayar.bsky.social explains how a high-profile scientist's statements about the 3l/ATLAS comet harnessed uncertainty and attention dynamics, and spawned widespread speculation about an alien visitor, an "alien of the gaps" in human knowledge: www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...

My wife has been HIV+ for 34 years. She’s alive today b/c work of activists who destigmatized the virus, pushed medical science to adapt & find ways to treat it, & advocated for gov health programs that helped fund her care. The current U.S. regime may want to go back in time, but we won’t let them.

The UW Center for an Informed Public is looking for postdocs (for 2026-2028) from across diverse disciplines whose research sheds light on the challenges of our modern information environment, promotes civic health, and/or helps people/communities navigate online spaces: apply.interfolio.com/177901

I have a lot to say about the X location feature/scandal but in the meantime @cwarzel.bsky.social is here to remind you that it was not a surprise (see next post), the incentives are misaligned, and the corporations generally do not want to fix it. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Also damning (and perhaps even more meaningful in retrospect) is how Jack was in there RTing Crystal1Johnson, revealing how the “new elites” of Twitter have long been high on their own supply (of disinformation). Jack just got his from the Gabbard wing of the “left” and now Elon from the hard right

Social media could work differently. We teach digital literacy, but ppl often can’t apply those lessons w/in systems that obscure where info comes from & how it gets to them. What might social media look like if users had better signals of information provenance? www.rawstory.com/maga-foreign...

THREAD: Judge Ellis is the first federal judge to review extensive body cam video of DHS's actions in Chicago. She finds that DHS *repeatedly* misled the public and made claims that were disproven by agents' own videos. I'll go through some of the most egregious ones here.

The party that promised "free speech on campus" has made sure there can be no free speech on campuses.

I am by no means a prominent public intellectual, but my inbox is increasingly filled with messages from people who have been convinced by sycophantic chatbots that they have discovered revolutionary theories that entirely upend our scientific understanding of the universe.

Cool story in the @salish-current.org about our collaboration with Sedro-Woolley high school teachers Linsey Kitchens and Anna Ferdinand to bring _Modern Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines_ (thebullshitmachines.com) to a high school audience.

Our team at the @cip.uw.edu is currently seeking applications for up to two postdoctoral scholar positions. Applications received prior to January 15, 2026 will be given priority. Learn more about the positions, salary range, qualifications and application process: apply.interfolio.com/177901

I missed this when it initially came out, but now it seems the whole country is about to see this video, through one frame or another.

How "Gold Standard Science" of them. Really showing us how science should be ignor- um, interpreted

Elon Musk's Grokipedia cites a neo-Nazi website 42 times, researchers say www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-mu...

I haven't had enough time to process this yet but, I've studied the anti-vax movement for 7 years of my career and I can't believe I'm now at the point where I can't recommend the CDC as a trustworthy source of health information. This is dangerous, insane, and embarrassing.

Just wanna re-up in simple terms that when Biden talked to platforms, Jim Jordan launched years of investigations into everybody involved, said it was tyranny, censorship, etc. And now they just straight up acknowledge that they talk to platforms too. www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crime/3...

Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.

"Heck of a job, Bobby." "If the outbreaks cannot be extinguished by January, the anniversary of the first cases in Texas, the United States will lose what is known as “elimination status” as determined by the World Health Organization." (gift link)

I wonder who could possibly benefit from this? Such a mystery. www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

In addition to being absurd on the surface, this is another example of how Silicon Valley does not understand how human systems work. Being good at math is not the predictor of success Boyle assumes it is. Data scientists and mathematicians are the labor class of modern white collar work.

Nice piece, and consistent with our findings that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online www.science.org/doi/full/10....

And it begs the question as to what the reality of "full autonomy" actually is. On paper, sure, they get to maintain "academic freedom". In practice? Don't ask the wrong questions or support the wrong students and the government won't cut your grants (again). Not really the definition of autonomous.

This was a fantastic article, and fits well to be read in concert with the one in the reply inthesetimes.com/article/the-...

This really hasn’t gotten enough attention this week. @wired.com #ICE www.wired.com/story/fbi-wa...

"Criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults in several states" according to an FBI bulletin. Which, of course, gives ICE cover to commit the same crimes. "It wasn't us, it was different thugs, dressing up as us."

Last week, my Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction class covered an older paper about “social translucence” where they explain how the design of online systems shapes the norms & behaviors w/in those systems. But the framework they create can be applied more broadly, eg to our political moment.

Stick your head in the sand long enough and you may find that when you try to speak only sand comes out.

If you aren't paying attention to what is happening in Illinois/Chicago, you're missing out on Bovino and federal agents using tear gas, pepper balls, and force against the people. Check out our investigation alongside @evidentmedia.org

Happy, honored, humbled by this: www.volvogroup.com/en/news-and-... Thanks 2 all friends, family, colleagues, who have supported me along the way, esp #ErikMConway & @bloomsburybooksus.bsky.social @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social @harvard.edu @harvardhistsci.bsky.social @ucsandiego.bsky.social

This article provokes a broader question: as our institutions are systematically dismantled, how can we reimagine and rebuild them in a way that is resilient to this type of manipulation, ensuring they advance the interests of the people they purport to serve?

What could possibly go wrong

I know we a so far beyond this point, but the blatant hypocrisy continues to be one of the most frustrating parts of these narratives. I'm reminded of a quote about hypocrisy being a flex for authoritarians, a way to assert power. Something like that

Bullshit as U.S. government policy. This is the punchline from my Feb 2025 lecture. If you’re interested in understanding more about how we got here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjiG... It ends with a call to action to rage against the bullshit machine.

Shocking

This is certainly not surprising to those of us in the election space. We wrote about hybrid infrastructures supporting undermining elections via "evidence" generation and DDoS style iniatives purging voter rolls as part of our rumoring research last election cycle. www.cip.uw.edu/2024/10/29/e...