What’s wrong with the UK govt #digitalidentity plans? *eyerolls* the utter disregard for previous research & lived experience showing how technosolutionist & overly risk-focused approaches to #onlinesafety affect civil liberties & the safety of marginalised people. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I am having a hard time reconciling "Charlie Kirk was a fierce advocate of open dialogue and free expression" with "we must identify and persecute everyone who is insufficiently mournful"

Now that the @aoir.bsky.social 2025 Timetable is live, catch our panel: "PLATFORM GOVERNANCE AT THE MARGINS: RULES, RELATIONS AND RESISTANCE" on 17 Oct at 2pm! Loved putting it together w/ Samuel Cabbuag, Crystal Abidin, Ruepert Cao, @zaritaylor.bsky.social, Kiara Child & @cjpersaud.bsky.social 🤟

Most mainstream media platforming Farage as if his win was inevitable, with little fact-checking or evidence of his lies’ effects on the UK, shows a carelessness or worse, negligence over how his baseless claims are re-packaged as social media clips fed to algorithms on loop.

Ngl not loving the idea of coming back to the UK after a while away today to painted roundabouts, Farage hype & pensioners under arrest for peaceful protests. Hating this entirely spin-stoked xenophobic vibes & forgetfulness of Brexit lies. This isn’t the country I moved to in 2011 🥲

Just in time before I take a break: my paper with @pamogranite.bsky.social and Richard Brown focusing on content creators’ hopes and fears about #artificialintelligence is out, open access, in Convergence: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Today is my last day at @northumbriauni.bsky.social's Centre for Digital Citizens, where I’ve been an innovation fellow for 3 and a half years. So here's a goodbye post feat. thank yous, learnings and fave things :)

I was on the BBC World Service's Tech Life programme yesterday, discussing what happens to users when they lose their social media account and what needs to change to prevent the increasingly unaccountable and AI-driven cases of mismoderation on Meta platforms. open.spotify.com/episode/3LXl...

Spoke w/ @jonbrady.bsky.social for this @dailymail.co.uk piece about #AI #influencers, discussing the precarity of (human) creator work. I argue that bypassing creators via sanitised & unattainable AI influencers dismisses the efforts & creativity of their labour www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Back from leave with this interview with with The Independent, in the fabulous company of @cindygallop.bsky.social, SheSpot and many more of those who do fantastic work in this area. www.independent.co.uk/health-and-f...

Because I am angry I will share this again. One of the reasons that Israel is able to target individuals so precisely is that it collects every phone call in Gaza and stores the recordings in Microsoft Azure, then uses AI to analyze and pick targets.

UK regulation of the internet continues to be mind-numbing stupid. Ministers have spent years passing laws giving the power to fine tech companies billions if they don’t moderate legal content that could harm certain audiences. Now they’re threatening fines of billions if they moderate it ‘wrong’.

No, UK’s Online Safety Act Doesn’t Make Children Safer Online - www.techdirt.com/2025/08/06/n... "must lead the way in introducing policies that actually protect all users—including children—rather than pushing the enforcement of legislation that harms the very people it was meant to protec" #osa

Thread with more good articles and research on content moderation, freedom of speech and erotic expression, and payment processor censorship from @bloggeronpole.bsky.social. She's done such good work investigating how platforms and corporate interests stifle sex workers and NSFW expression online!

Back from leave today & starting my work posts with this interview I did last week with @theobserveruk.bsky.social's Sensemaker podcast about payment processors' role in content moderation on social media and in the gaming world - thank you for thinking of me, @chefboibex.bsky.social!

Another nice bit of press showing how social media censorship of SW tends to lead to censorship of educational content. Gave my 2 cents connecting s*x ed, censorship & the broligarchy, showing how difficult a space this is to navigate for content creators. fullerproject.org/story/these-...

I'm back from leave, a few days after the #ageID requirements came into force in the UK. I spoke with @stokel.bsky.social about my ID verification concerns in a world where so much of our lives are already affected by unaccountable, private, techbro led companies www.fastcompany.com/91370158/int...

It's apt that corporations/governments divided the internet into SFW and NSFW & are now making it all Safe For Work, because that is the defining frame they want to place on the world--everywhere you go is for Work, not pleasure or art or love or culture. You must always Work for Them, or die.

Happy Age Verification Day! I'm quoted in this vg Wired piece on why it's all sort of a hot mess. www.wired.com/story/the-ag...

This is not directed at anyone in my network, just at Big Tech and at anyone who thinks more AI and less humans will improve online safety and content moderation: I am SO TIRED.

What are powerful AI CEOs, people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk really after? Are they ACTUALLY propelled by christianity and "transhumanism", or is theirs a much more banal quest for money and power? I ask @nsrnicek.bsky.social, author of Silicon Empires 👇🏻🧵... (link in thread)

Got a new interview up on the blog, with one of the most accomplished pole performers, trans activists and event organisers I know - and she's only 19! Read my interview with the founder of the Italian pole competition Erotic Hell here: bloggeronpole.com/2025/07/elvi...

Thanks @stokel.bsky.social for speaking to me about my worries regarding age ID - in great company too, with @mattnavarra.com & Myles Jackman 💪🏼

Per una volta scrivo in italiano perché il mio studio sullo shadowban di Instagram pubblicato da Feminist Media Studies nel 2021 è stato finalmente tradotto nella mia lingua per un'edizione speciale di Diritto e Questioni Pubbliche :) www.dirittoequestionipubbliche.org/page/2025_sp...

Finally landed in Sardinia to work remotely for the remaining stretch of my postdoc, take a lot of annual leave & enjoy good food & my family's company. For more life updates + the behind the scenes of my life as a pole dancing academic, you can read my latest #newsletter: mailchi.mp/e0e856d2f53b...

Thanks Chris for featuring me in this @wsj.com story! Content moderation is 1 of the biggest challenges of our time. While the volume of content posted on social media platforms makes an AI attractive solution, my research shows context is crucial for effective moderation - and that requires humans.

Thanks @grahamjfraser.bsky.social for interviewing me for this @bbctech.bsky.social piece about the concerning list of un-appealable IG deletions. These affect average users & as I argue here may be the result of recent policy & approach changes + the company's under-investment in appeals...

Increasing stories (@bbctech.bsky.social last week, now via @theguardian.com) show Meta bans users & small businesses w/o the right to appeal, an escalation of what the adult content, LGBTQIA+, activist users I observe in my work have been experiencing for years ⤵️ www.theguardian.com/money/2025/j...

For the blog I interviewed AM Davies, who has launched a consultancy to ensure that, following the rise of intimacy coordinators & representation of SW & strippers in media and entertainment, SWs are consulted to ensure their depiction is authentic and not harmful: bloggeronpole.com/2025/07/yas-...

Q: What’s more hilarious than a predatory website turning my article into an #AI generated podcast without my consent? A: The fact that the article BEGAN as a podcast made by me & @elinorcarmi.bsky.social. So basically glaciers were melted to turn our podcast into a worse podcast. #academicChatter

Not TikTokers trying to sell me WWIII prep gadgets on TikTok shop ☠️

@bloggeronpole.bsky.social have you seen this yet? Once again, a platform that has grown fat off the labour and expression of sex workers — kinky SWers in particular — has thrown its content creators under the bus to satiate the payment processors. If SESTA-FOSTA has no haters, I am dead.

Part of the horror of Trump is that he does things American presidents have been doing for a century, but crudely and without plausible deniability. You're just forced to sort of look at it squarely in the face.

It's become OFFICIAL - we Millennials have become profoundly uncool, at least according to Gen Z.... And to come to the bottom of this sassy generational BEEF I talked to social media researcher @bloggeronpole.bsky.social 👇🏻 youtu.be/_tqBTnDSWg0 #genz #fashiontrends

I mean, it’s not like there was a lot of research about this out there based on actual data and people’s experiences… oh wait

Always feel weird when sharing vids of myself when the world is literally on fire but it'd be rude not to share this really lovely chat with @smartcookies.bsky.social - thanks for having me & letting me whinge about platforms + their owners while trying to convince Gen Zs that I am, indeed, cool

CCSN begins its Discord era! ✨ 🧑‍🏫 We are fortunate to be collaborating with the Discord Academic Research Community (D/ARC) to provide you a NEW means to connect with other scholars! Join us: discord.gg/KkFBy9MJ

“A 2010 study that analyzed 40 years of protest coverage in five major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, found that the papers depicted protests — even peaceful ones — as nuisances rather than as necessary functions of democracy.”

Across @okfn.bsky.social projects and services, we are currently facing this problem. AI crawlers are killing openness as a design principle, forcing walls, checkpoints, and control to defend against resource drain and exploitation.

Peter Kyle on #bbclaurak saying Labour’s aiming for a small, automated govt, with more chatbots like in the travel industry. Customers hate chatbots lol? And as my research shows here, removing humans where they’re needed is harmful for users www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Back from a gorgeous 10 days in Greece with the news in my inbox that our panel has made it into #AoIR2025! Catch me, @samcabbuag.bsky.social, Crystal Abidin, Ruepert Cao, @zaritaylor.bsky.social _ and @cjpersaud.bsky.social in Rio 💪🏼🇧🇷

Going to Greece on hol tomorrow and will be offline for a week or so 🥰 leaving you with @whoretographer’s fab shots from the Lover Management bday party. See you on the other side 😛

a true challenge by the brill @bloggeronpole.bsky.social & @pamogranite.bsky.social to the corporate discourse of *community* on platforms. They capture how creators at risk are forced to navigate corpo-civic spaces where care, visibility & belonging are destabilized by commercial governance; GOLD👇

Caught up with @niamhmcintyre.bsky.social's crucial yet disturbing investigation on social media content moderators for @tbij.bsky.social. It describes the issues affecting content moderators' wellbeing as systemic, a term I've also used in papers on excessive censorship & inadequate appeals.

In a new paper for Convergence, @pamogranite.bsky.social & I examine the challenges Instagram & TikTok creators at risk of de-platforming face when holding onto communities, arguing that these spaces' turn towards entertainment & selling is producing fatigue: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

S3xual Freedom Awards 2025: completed it mate, for the 3rd year running ✅🏆 it is always an honour & a pleasure to come back to judge this gorgeous ceremony celebrating s3xual pioneers after having won activist of the year in 2019.

I'm in @theguardian.com (print & online) today, using my research to talk about something fun for a change: intergenerational judgement between Millennials & Gen Z, who now believe us Millennials are cringe. Thanks @chloehamilton.bsky.social for interviewing me! www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

S3x on Stage - Performing the body politic is OUT with @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social & it opens with my chapter about decompartmentalising my pole dancer & academic identities. We just had a wonderful, sold-out book launch at the gorgeous Scarlet Letters, the perfect space ❤️‍🔥

Spoke with Darshita Goyal for @mashable.com re: the BOP House, a social media content creator mansion that is highlighting how moral panics about children and the internet often create discourse that strips women (and young women) of their agency. mashable.com/article/bop-...

It was an honour to deliver a keynote at the launch of ESWA’s report on social media platforms’ accountability. Their report provides key recos to improve platform governance with a crucial change from usual trends in the field: it centres SWs’ perspectives ⤵️