Working on climate projects using immersive media — or have a strong concept and want support getting there? @weareagog.bsky.social is offering $25K–$200K grants for innovators, artists, organizers, researchers, impact-focused orgs, and more. No XR experience required. Applications close June 12!

Is there anything in the middle between parasitic, dehumanizing AI and stopping all AI development completely? What we need, says our co-director, @eli.bsky.social, is prosocial AI that reinforces human connection over profit-driven engagement.

Here’s what the model makers don’t understand yet: these AI tools require your trust. They rely on you connecting your sensitive apps and accounts.

Online moderators and community stewards have one of the toughest jobs on the internet: making digital spaces feel more human. Recognizing the value of stewardship, and the lack of resources available, we created a guide, “Creating a Flourishing Digital Public Space for Your Local Area.”

This is for the small-scale builders making useful alternatives to Big Tech social media 👏 @angelquicksey.bsky.social, Managing Director at New_ Public, explains why we need the Open Social Awards, which are being awarded this Friday, June 5.

What can we learn about technology from fiction, including popular movies like The Drama? 🤖✏️ One of our community members, Jack-Lucas Chang, is seeking great writers and editors to collaboratively interrogate social tech!!

Is AI inherently parasitic? newpublic.substack.com/p/what-eli-s...

Engaged California is using virtual town halls to encourage Californians to share their thoughts on the impacts of AI with their local government. For any Californian who’s found a typical town hall inaccessible, now is the time to make your voice heard! 💬 join.engaged.ca.gov/en/projects/...

Big Tech social media isn't really social anymore. We scroll more than we post, and we consume content more than we connect with others. Research from @zephoria.bsky.social suggests we should call it what it really is: parasocial media. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New_ Public Co-Director @eli.bsky.social was invited to speak at the Vatican, just before Pope Leo published his encyclical on the urgency of moral, prosocial AI. Here’s what Eli had to say about this moment of transformation:

The AI future we imagined in our research on hyper-personalized, agentic interfaces just got a lot less speculative — Google said they are moving away from Search as we know it, in favor of “longer, more conversational queries,” writes @sarahp.bsky.social at @techcrunch.com.

For more than 150 years, editors were the gatekeepers and decided what we saw in the media. Social media algorithms automated that gatekeeping. Now, AI-powered interfaces that know you, talk to you, and decide what you see and what you don’t.

This Thursday at 3:30pm ET / 12:30 PT: we’re going live with New_ Public’s @angelquicksey.bsky.social to talk about how AI is changing the internet and what that means for your social media, your communities, and your everyday life. We’ll be taking your questions! open.substack.com/live-stream/...

The internet you grew up on isn't dying, but a commercial veneer glued on top of it is. @terrygodier.com’s interactive essay goes through the “boring internet” — the ugly, old protocols that build the foundations of the internet — and the venture-backed “platforms layer” that's being monopolized.

💬 The agentic layer: How we act. AI agents will soon research, draft, and lobby on your behalf — mediating the relationship between individuals and the institutions that govern them. → We need ways to evaluate whether AI agents faithfully represent their users.

“AI is changing what it means to be a democratic citizen.” Andrew Sorota and @jhendler.bsky.social, who lead work on AI and democracy at the Office of Eric Schmidt, share the three layers of AI’s influence on governance – and how we can design something better 🧵:

“We safety-test kids’ PJs. Why not their AI?” 💯 We absolutely need more consumer advocacy on this new class of products, especially as it becomes more embedded into our everyday lives (and not always by choice…) Excited to follow geoffreyfowler.bsky.social ’s work at the Youth AI Safety Institute!

AI is breaking the social contract that has let the internet thrive for decades. Amidst the disruption, a new reality is emerging: 🫂Connection survives 💸Trust is scarce 🧑‍💻Building is cheap This is a new, specific, unusual combination, and it provides a surprisingly non-apocalyptic opportunity…

What if we thought about digital spaces like an ecologist? We’d consider the incredible communities that come together over the interwebs – yes, even through social media – in a totally different way. substack.com/home/post/p-...

All journalists should take heed: AI isn’t just coming to replace writers, it’s also coming for all of journalism as we know it. When hyperpersonalized AI can take in dozens of sources, across dozens of platforms, the old model falls apart. And yet, it’s not all doom and gloom…

We did an analysis of which social media apps are vulnerable to being replaced by AI. See which apps have less exposure to AI disruption, and which are, as the kids say… cooked.

These aren’t the kind of posts that go viral – but they are the kind that actually help people. Resources, requests for public input, and opportunities to support local businesses -- just for you and your neighbors. They’re also what Roundabout, our local community platform, was made for!

This week @eli.bsky.social and I shared what we learned from diving into how AI is shaping social technologies. 👉 Read the deck. 💬 And reach out if you're thinking about these things too.

🎉 @rude1.blacksky.team, Founder of @blackskyweb.xyz, will be the opening keynote speaker at the Open Social Awards ceremony! 🌐🌱✨ An important institution of the Open Web, Blacksky centers community safety and self-governance by putting digital tools in the hands of community members. 🖤

In 1999, the assumptions we had about who would rule the internet were wildly off. The rules of AI are still being written, right now. We have power to shape the future.

There’s power in proximity! 🏠 This is exactly why we build Roundabout – to breakdown isolating norms and uplift the many opportunities neighbors have to show up for one another. www.vox.com/the-highligh...

Deeply honored to be part of this project. It's worth a read... even if I'm a bit biased. Tons of forward thinking about what the agentic AI future might (and should) look like if we care about democratic vitality. Grateful to @eli.bsky.social for including me.

15 years ago, I wrote a book called The Filter Bubble, warning that algorithmic personalization was going to fracture our shared reality. I’m sharing new research because we are about to do this again, but on a far bigger and faster scale. AI is coming for the info environment, and fast.

AI is introducing all sorts of new thoughts and feelings. We need new vocabulary to move the conversation forward. @digitalthriving.bsky.social allowed the New_ Public team to get creative with some new AI phrases – we’d love to know what you’d add to the list 📝

@prosocialdesign.bsky.social says a new social media metric could elevate positive, prosocial content! Scores rating a post’s “quality,” as opposed to likes and shares, could help minimize the reach of toxic posts on social platforms: www.prosocialdesign.org/library/qual...

Join the @socialcohesiontech.bsky.social Global Expo, a global conversation around tech design, on May 20th. New_ Public’s Bach Bui will join a session on platform design choices and share about the development of Roundabout, our local community app 🙌 www.techandsocialcohesion.org/expo-2026-re...

We didn’t originally plan to build a platform like Roundabout, our local community app. But community leaders told us us that they couldn’t compete against the profit-driven technologies these social platforms were built on top of. So our team decided to build something with different incentives.

Amazing work from @rude1.blacksky.team and the team at @blackskyweb.xyz 👏👏 Excited to see how Acorn will enable communities with all different kinds of technical backgrounds in building their own digital spaces across the open social web.

We’re learning what a social media platform designed with community members, built at local scale, and applying intentional AI tools can look like. 🙌 We’re excited to share some of the ways neighbors are using Roundabout, our local community app, to bring their communities closer together.

Join New_ Public Co-director @eli.bsky.social, as well as special guests @semaforben.bsky.social & @jasmine.bsky.social, for a presentation of new research on how AI will transform the way we connect to information and each other. Tuesday, May 12th | 1-2pm ET / 10-11am PT luma.com/noj7wtec?tk=...

Reminder: Get your OSA application in!! Applications are due by 11:59pm PST on Friday May 1, 2026 🌐🌱✨

Want to support Wikipedia AND your local government? Here’s a request for support from our friends at Govdirectory, a “crowdsourced and fact checked directory of official governmental online accounts and services.” You can find all these resources here: newpublic.substack.com/p/bulletin-b...

Opinion columnist William McKenzie highlights our research on local digital spaces in the @dallasnews.com: Our study, led by @taliastroud.bsky.social and @engagingnews.bsky.social, shows that most people don’t want to engage in incendiary online interactions. archive.is/vbeNh

Media Party New York 2026, a three day convening with workshops and keynotes, including New_ Public Co-Director @eli.bsky.social, is coming up on Friday, May 8. Come see and help shape what journalism looks like in a “post-search era.” We’re particularly excited about the Media Party hackathon 👀

Among the many great talks at this year’s @atmosphereconf.org, Principal Software Engineer for Roundabout @blaine.bsky.social’s talk about Roundabout, cheese, and ecological computing is a must-watch. Yes, we’re a little biased, but also, don’t those topics sound like they go great together? 🤌🧑‍🍳

We think of Roundabout, our local community app, as a one-stop shop for all things local community: town hall-style conversations, local news, events and happenings (no matter how small!), and word-of-mouth recommendations — all in one place and stewarded by a trusted and trained neighbor 🫶

Our partners at @cbcradiocanada.bsky.social are now using new conversational tools developed by New_ Public and Public Spaces Incubator! Readers can submit a response along a spectrum, encouraging users to see and share more nuanced opinions beyond the typical binary.

@fediforum.org, the global online unconference dedicated to the Open Social Web, is taking place next week April 28-30! The unconference is designed to serve all levels of interest & experience, so anyone curious about the tech that powers Bluesky, Mastodon, & more should take a look at the agenda:

For anyone building new apps and tools on ATproto that are … 🌐 on the Open Web 🌱 past the prototype stage ✨ reimagining the social internet New_ Public, @publicspaces.net and @waag.org are investing up to €10,000 in alternatives to Big Tech Learn more, share, or apply by May 1st newpublic.org/OSA

While we support building new tools, especially for the social internet where alternatives are desperately needed, we want to avoid fueling the toxic “founder industrial complex”.

Many of us take Wikipedia for granted. How does it sustain such a high level of quality, stewardship, and diverse expertise? The Citizens and Technology Lab studies what Wiki reveals about the potential for human cooperation and how to organize people for the common good. Here’s what they found:

Surprising no one, Meta has decided to close down their VR platform Horizon Worlds, after they invested $80 billion into it and encouraged five years of community building within it. Communities, including AA meetings and a church that met there every Sunday, are rightfully devastated.

Former surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy, who declared loneliness as a public health crisis, now has a newsletter. We’re excited to see what else this up and comer has to say about human connection and belonging 😁

This is the “cracker barrel effect”, where our collective memory is warped by fabricated online popularity. (Nearly half of the posts about the CB logo “controversy” were from bots)