Surveillance is a one-way ratchet toward authoritarianism. Yes, even by private companies. Even when people “consent.” Even when the company gives you “free” stuff, or let you stand in a shorter line, or make your life more convenient somehow.

The only responsibility I feel right now, along with many others in Germany, is to keep bookmarking moments like this, so that people here don't turn around and tell the rest of the world "we had no idea what was happening". They know. Everyone knows. At best - at best - they don't want to see it.

The Trump administration is systematically trying to frame European regulations as censorship. They try to find evidence, they leak documents, they intimidate civl society, journalists and scholars. They are not finding anything. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Excellent coverage of the @thecoalition.bsky.social suit against the Trump administration over the misinfo/trust and safety visa ban: www.barrons.com/news/tech-re...

Great piece on why the crackdown on independent tech researchers is so dangerous and misguided, especially in the context of war

Recommended read from @courtneyr.bsky.social on the Coalition for Independent Technology Research lawsuit against the Trump administration for chilling speech and retaliating against researchers working in the public interest to study phenomena on tech platforms. (I am a member of the Coalition.)

Marco Rubio is confused about "censorship" and a lot of people inside and outside the United States are paying a high price for it. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...

This is a vitally important issue for the future of global Internet research—really, for all research. Delighted to see @knightcolumbia.org, @protectdemocracy.org, and @thecoalition.bsky.social taking on this fight.

ICYMI, @thecoalition.bsky.social @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org filed a new First Amendment lawsuit earlier today challenging the Trump admin's denial of visas to tech researchers, tech workers, fact-checkers. Here's a post explaining why we're suing. mailchi.mp/knightcolumb...

Researchers in the US live in "pervasive fear" of immigration enforcement. It has “chilling effects" on independent research and advocacy. Now the researchers are suing 💪🏽 www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...

Excellent news: people are fighting back. The @knightcolumbia.org and @protectdemocracy.org (via @thecoalition.bsky.social) just sued the Trump administration for using visa revocations and deportation threats to silence researchers and academics. This is how you respond to abuse of power. 🧵

It's pathetic that the Trump administration thinks it can frame research, regulatory inquiry & content moderation by private companies as censorship. Yet here we are. Good lawsuit to defend free speech principles globally @knightcolumbia.org @protectdemocracy.org: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...

The Coalition for Independent Technology Research is standing up for free speech and against a government Censorship Policy that is threatening every American’s right to understand how technology impacts them, their children, and so much more. www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...

We @thecoalition.bsky.social sued the US State Department today. The govt's Censorship Policy, which it is using to revoke and deny visas of technology researchers, students, fact-checkers and trust & safety workers, is clearly aimed at punishing those whose speech the government doesn't like.

It arrives in the middle of a solidarity action: we (3000 French academics) just published an op-Ed in @liberation.fr newspaper in solidarity with @standupforscience.bsky.social, highlighting how French academia faces very similar issues if less spectacularly.

"It's not a legal story, but a question of political attitude," Thierry Breton told the European Parliament yesterday. He said he’d spent years explaining the law to platform CEOs and US govt officials, that they understood it, and that their current posture was a deliberate political choice.

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41... We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance 1/

The biggest threats to journalism in this country, and to the possibility of an informed and empowered electorate, stem from the political economy of the media. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

really excellent assessment of House GOP claims about EU fine of X, showing just how seriously hollow the claims of censorship are. jordan & musk & friends overreach when they put out such patently tendentious reports, which could be boiled down to: don't you ever touch american platforms!

Interesting next step: @democracyreporting.bsky.social taking X to court again over researcher data access. (In Hungarian elections) @jakubjaraczewski.bsky.social www.politico.eu/article/hung...

hear that? it's the silence of Republican lawmakers who spent the last bunch of years pretending to be "First Amendment absolutists" when they got mad about specific content moderation decisions made by private platforms

The arrests of Lemon and Fort are intended to deter journalists from doing work we need them to do, and that the First Amendment was meant to protect. DOJ should drop these prosecutions or the courts should throw them out. knightcolumbia.org/content/knig...

CITR's @geurkink.bsky.social on @techpolicypress.bsky.social podcast breaking down why researchers need #BetterAccess to public platform data to better understand our digital information environment 🎟️ Sign up for the Better Access webinar next Weds January 28: kgi.georgetown.edu/events/bette...

The Trump admin's sanctions on researchers and regulators who work on content-moderation, fact-checking, and disinfo are part of an effort to protect the tech ecosystem that has allowed the the far right to flourish. Good piece from @davidakaye.bsky.social. www.techpolicy.press/the-trump-li...

It doesn’t fix things, but it really does bring me comfort to know how miserable some of the worst people are. Donald Trump tweeting over 200 times on Christmas. Billionaires fighting with strangers online during the holidays. Everything about Elon Musk

Four public-interest researchers have been barred from the US for holding tech companies accountable. When governments target researchers, journalists and watchdogs, it is an assault on free speech and we should call it out as such. Researchers are not censors. They are being censored. 1/3

The US has sanctioned European researchers and policymakers studying misinformation, framing independent inquiry as a free speech violation. The Trump admin's refusal to allow regulation of platforms is US tech policy by other means—now being enforced through sanctions. Scholars must pay attention.

NEW: last night, the US govt launched an assault on the ‘global censorship industrial complex’, aka European tech researchers/campaigners. It’s a deeply chilling move & speaks as to why we need international solidarity more than ever. open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

My second post about researchers’ rights to scrape data under DSA Article 40.12 is up! This is dense with legal arguments for researchers to use if they get sued. Or to show their lawyers before that. www.techpolicy.press/how-the-mean... verfassungsblog.de/dsa-fine-x-r...

Per usual, @mmasnick.bsky.social offers astute analysis of the Bullshit Industrial Complex’s claims, this time regarding new H1B visa vetting policies. This sentence is 🌟: “This policy censors non-censors for not doing the thing that the White House and MAGA folks are actively doing every day.”

Very cool and important job for someone in NYC!

As a kid who used to love to sit up late in my rural county peering into the vastness of space, I find it almost physically painful to stare into the cluttered sky and find my gaze constantly interrupted by all of this disposable litter. This graph does not indicate progress to me.

Scientists must learn to join larger pro-democracy and people's movements, coalitions. Our science training may not have prepared us for such work, but we can no longer sit in the safety of our labs and expect the world to get better My book review @thelancet.com www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege reut.rs/48eKxnO

Many assume that if someone is high profile, their public data is fair game for collection & analysis. @annalenhart.bsky.social & @brandonsilverman.bsky.social interviewed high profile people to learn more. The report shares practical suggestions for platforms, researchers, & policymakers.

Think platform data from social media only matters for election or disinformation research? Think again. George Pearson, a researcher at the Truth Initiative, shows it’s vital for public health—revealing how tobacco companies can target youth, dodge regulations, and influence policy.

Last week’s elections show how central social media has become to campaigns with politicians on nearly every platform. But as Josephine Lukito and Kaitlyn Dowling explain, we know less and less about them, because access to this data is shrinking.

New essay from the series, Seeing the Digital Sphere: The Case for Public Platform Data! As platforms restrict data access, a global data drought is deepening, write Rachelle Faust and Daniel Arnaudo. A new framework can reclaim the public square and restore access for frontline researchers.

"Society needs a deeper understanding and greater transparency of AI and social media recommendations. We currently lack insights that could be key to uncovering intended or unintended manipulation," writes @marietjeschaake.bsky.social:

Congratulations, Andrew Cuomo! I know how hard you worked for this.

This surge in applications from the US comes at a time where the grant and job market in Europe is already *very* competitive. Unless Europe invests more in science and higher education this influx of talent will put a squeeze on an already fragile system. www.ft.com/content/cd80...

Why is it that every disappeared US citizen is not front page news? At the very least we should have a little box with a count of the number of citizens who have been taken away and are not locatable and a link to a story with photos & min-bios, just as we used to do with military casually figures.

"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 🧪

(6) This idea that democrats should abandon trans people and immigrants and climate change (in 2025!) is just unconscionably dumb. Declaring “I’m focused on prescription drug prices” sounds like pandering because it IS pandering. Everyone can tell. Try standing for something. See how it feels.

The @ec.europa.eu preliminarily finds TikTok and Meta in breach of transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act. The EC also finds that Meta and TikTok have put in place "burdensome procedures and tools for researchers to request access to public data." ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

This new reporting from @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social is jaw-dropping and I think warrants a response from @cos.io given their ongoing collaboration with Meta. Jeff writes about how Meta identified content-specific harms as a key problem for teens on Instagram. 🧵 www.reuters.com/business/ins...

New from me and @brendannyhan.bsky.social Why Trump's "Compact for Academic Excellence" is a devil's bargain and should be rejected in all forms www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

It was incredibly moving to hear Prof Nickel and other non-citizen professors testify in court about the ways in which the arrests and deportations of students had affected them and their colleagues. So grateful to them for their integrity and courage. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Very proud of my colleagues right now--especially @ramyakrishnan.bsky.social and @alexabdo.bsky.social. But we could not have got this far without the superb trial lawyers at Sher Tremonte. Grateful to them for all of the time and energy they put into this case. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/u...

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, @freiheitsrechte.org! <3