Our latest study of "Algorithmic Biases on X before the 2025 Polish Presidential Election" reveals that the default algorithmic feed of X showed mostly posts from right-wing parties and amplified political extremes, most likely due to the 2023 updates of X following its takeover (read on). 🧵1/7

We want neutrality ⚖️ and free speech 💬 in social media. But can we achieve that without transparency? I don't think so. So right-wing and left-wing policymakers need to talk and figure out how independent researchers can study platforms. An excellent piece for @science.org, with my inputs. 🧵1/2

"Access to data by researchers is a crucial element of ensuring transparency and democratic accountability,” @lewan.bsky.social says. “The public is entitled to know what platforms and their algorithms are doing to the information landscape.” I wrote for @science.org about Meta, TikTok and the DSA 🧪

GreenEarth is creating open source AI-driven recommender infrastructure for BlueSky. Type a prompt, see your feed change. We are here for the users, the builders, the dreamers. Join us. greenearthsocial.substack.com/p/introducin...

Last days every morning and evening I was passing by a church that Berliners nicknamed "the hollow tooth", badly damaged in 1943 and never rebuilt as a memorial of WWII, on my way to an excellent and timely workshop about platform transparency organized in Berlin by @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social.

Right-leaning podcaster Joe Rogan has chimed in on the suspension of late night host Jimmy Kimmel amid pressure from the Trump administration, saying the government should not determine what comedians say and that conservatives were “crazy” to support any such interference. https://cnn.it/4mvp3Ik

I'm voting for free speech with my wallet, and cancelling my Disney+ subscription.

The design of social media platforms, including their AI systems and algorithms, likely contributes to the over-representation of extreme views (image @financialtimes.com). What platforms do we want? For example shall we balance diverse perspectives and societal stability? www.ft.com/content/9251...

Programmers who thought AI would make them 20% faster ended up being 19% slower metr.org/blog/2025-07...

Academics once loved Twitter—but in the age of X they’ve abandoned it in droves. www.wired.com/story/bluesk...

Brazil offers a lesson in democracy to an America that is becoming more corrupt, protectionist and authoritarian econ.st/4peBqLR

On the day when Israel killed four more Al Jazeera journalists, it's time we recognize that Israel killed in Gaza more journalists than ever died in any other war, including the World Wars. Source: attached research at Brown University. Let this sink in. watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/p...

Research advocates are expressing alarm over a White House directive on federal grantmaking released yesterday that they say threatens to enhance President Donald Trump’s control over science agency decisions on what to fund. scim.ag/45q6P4J

Holy crap every single post is negative www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/

Can you distinguish between photos of 🇵🇸 2025 Gaza and 🇵🇱 1945 Warsaw? Take this half-minute anonymous quiz to see! Please repost for reach! t.ly/NfRy1 (Today is the 81st anniversary of Warsaw Uprising.)

NEW: i spoke to nine (!) scientists across several disciplines whose work was cited in the new Department of Energy report that downplays the severity of climate change. all of them say their work was misrepresented, cherry picked, and/or lacked context —

We gave with Vishal Kalakonnavar three talks at one of my favourite research conferences, @ic2s2.bsky.social, in Sweden, representing the SIMS lab. This was a fantastic conference 🎉. I'm looking forward to the next year's edition in Vermont! I attach pointers to the studies we've presented:

Trump's AI Action Plan is even worse than I thought it'd be. It's a tech industry wishlist with every box ticked. It signals the further coherence of Silicon Valley and the Trump-led federal government into a cooperative, automation-bent surveillance state. It's a blueprint for dystopia.

Kathleen Carley introducing the term "social cybersecurity" at @ic2s2.bsky.social.

On my way ✈️🚌 to Norrköping in 🇸🇪 for @ic2s2.bsky.social conference. Looking forward to meeting everyone! 😊 The SIMS lab will deliver 3 talks in sessions starting at 14:30 1. Tuesday: Political Biases on X before the 2025 German Federal Election (session: Online Platforms & Algorithms II)

Thanks to @masslive.bsky.social for great coverage of our @icwsm.bsky.social'25 study of global news coverage 📰! We show that deaths and 💰GDP💰 of event country are the strongest predictors of global news coverage of disasters and terrorist attacks (w @brenocon.bsky.social, @ethanz.bsky.social)!

Delighted and thankful that our study "Election Polls on Social Media: Prevalence, Biases, and Voter Fraud Beliefs" received Best Paper Honorable Mention at @icwsm.bsky.social'25! 🙏🎊 Please check the out attached thread to learn more about our study! 📄

This is a terrific paper and I'm very happy to have been a small contributor to it.

Excited to share our FAME method for news identification: Fingerprint-to-Article Matching for Events from a DB! We use it to study news coverage of disasters and conflicts (w @brenocon.bsky.social @ethanz.bsky.social). Check out our talk and poster at @icwsm.bsky.social!🧵👇 arxiv.org/abs/2506.12925

🚨 Excited to share our #ICWSM2025 paper 🚨 📄 "Effects of Research Paper Promotion via ArXiv and X" w/ @ericmalmi.bsky.social & @przemyslslaw.bsky.social We will present it at ICWSM this Tuesday at 5:15pm CET! 🧵👇

X disproportionately pushing content from far-right parties in the “for you” feed in the context of German and Polish elections. Algorithmic auditing suggests that X’s feed algorithm uses political affiliation as a signal to boost content. @przemyslslaw.bsky.social at DETOX workshop #ICWSM

On my way to @icwsm.bsky.social, where I'll give five research presentations, including a spotlight talk. It will undoubtedly be a busy conference, partly because my US-based students couldn't travel ✈️, but I'm looking forward to chatting with everyone, and visiting beautiful Copenhagen again! 😎

It's fascinating and concerning to learn statements of our politicians and media as the Israeli attack on Iran unfolds... International law scholars described the attack as a crime of aggression that "violates international law, threatening peace and security". 🧵1/3 www.ejiltalk.org/is-israels-u...

"There is no diplomacy in our world today. There is only war." Iran signed a deal to reduce its nuclear program in 2015, but Trump terminated it in 2018. Now Trump forces Iran to sign a new deal, while threatening to destroy the nation. How does Iran know whether it won't be destroyed either way? 🤔

How AI will surpass human intelligence... 😂😅

I've seen recent claims that LLMs have IQ comparable to that of humans. However, if LLMs were trained on the IQ questions they are tested on, they could simply have memorized the answers, so IQ test results may not say anything about their intelligence, but rather about their memory abilities. 🧵1/2

Our study of political biases on X is on the (brilliant 🤩) cover of University College Dublin's recent CS News!

We’re growing, and we want you with us! The Coalition for Independent Technology Research is a global community of researchers demanding transparency and supporting public understanding about the societal impacts of technology. (1/4)

President Donald Trump today asked Congress to make massive and unprecedented cuts to the 2026 budgets of major federal science agencies. scim.ag/3Yszqnm

#AI has evolved, it's time for better evaluations. But how can we get more effective benchmarks in "the wild"? Together with folks from the AI Lab at @umich.edu, we put together a white paper outlining our vision. Lu Wang and I summarize this vision for The Hill at thehill.com/opinion/tech...

This will be an unusual way to say Happy Easter!!! 🕊 But that's what's on my mind today 😁 This day, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. I'm agnostic, but different religions hold different beliefs about this event and the concept of resurrection. 1/3

This is how you do it. The "Mutual Academic Defense Compact". The moral imperative may be to fight... but the strategic imperative is to not fight alone: www.gazettenet.com/UMass-Amhers...

If you're searching for a postdoctoral position and you're interested in responsible AI, applied NLP, social data science, or social media, this is a great opportunity to start working with me!

BREAKING: More journalists have died in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023 than in both World Wars and other major wars, combined. Our new report outlines the costs of war to journalists – and the journalism we all rely on. [THREAD, 1/8] watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/p...

As @nicoblar.bsky.social pointed out to me this morning, National Rally pushed for passage of the rule that allows convicted politicians to be banned from running. They voted for it in Parliament. And it was first applied against a Macron ally.

my wife was fired this week from her job at a major local nonprofit hospital because Trump/Musk are strangling it to death while my cousin (a veteran nurse at the Alaska VA who helps other veterans all day) texts me to say she's likely being fired while her union gets dissolved

OpenAI's move to allow generating "Ghibly stlye" images isn't just a cute PR stunt. It is an expression of dominance and the will to reject and refuse democratic values. It is a vulgar display of power. https://tante.cc/2025/03/28/vulgar-display-of-power/

Next Monday evening, I'll present and discuss about political biases on X before the German election with the member of the European Parliament @alexandrageese.bsky.social and Director at Digihumanism @karinecaunes.bsky.social. If you'd like to join, register here: t1p.de/ys584. Looking forward!

The ARC-AGI-2 grand prize requires 85% AI performance in reasoning tasks at $0.42/task. This is a super high bar, if not infeasible, for the current wave of AI systems. It will require a 10,000 times reduction in cost! Many years will pass before we achieve it. Well done @fchollet.bsky.social! 🧵1/3

Honored to be a part of this excellent Tech Policy Press piece about social media algorithms. In short, we do not know whether social media platforms disproportionately moderate posts from some partisans because currently we don't have sufficient transparency. I expand this thought below. 🧵1/4

I was honored to participate in the NSF-FAPESP Workshop on Cybersecurity and Privacy in São Paulo, Brazil! It was truly inspiring to connect with brilliant minds from academia and industry, all dedicated to advancing this increasingly important research field.

I am #hiring! If you are interested in AI and data science this #PhD position may be of interest to you! This is a fully funded position at @ucdcs.bsky.social, €22,000 tax free per annum. Research area: AI for mining, understanding and augmenting public opinion and public discourse. Link below! 🧵1/2

If you're interested in digital policy or digital democracy, please consider following the Center for Digital Policy, the only such center in Ireland, which has just moved to Bluesky: @ucddigitalpolicy.bsky.social!