Good news everyone! 🎉 The new version 3.0 of graph-tool is just out with major improvements! See below. graph-tool.skewed.de graph-tool is a comprehensive and efficient Python library to work with networks, including structural, dynamical, and statistical algorithms, as well as visualization. 1/N

To understand functionality, we have to follow perturbations, flows, time scales and the diversity of possible responses. Following-up my latest seminar, invted by @kayson.bsky.social & Petra Vertes, I summarize the main findings and the discussion here: manlius.substack.com/p/what-netwo... 1/

AI gives us the marks of thought without giving us a thinker. A new post on why this may be less a puzzle about machines than a mirror for an old confusion of ours. “A thinking thing that is no one” baronca.substack.com/p/a-thinking...

The essay was never just words on a page. It was a promise. My new post, "The Student Who Wasn't There," is about what AI does to that promise, and how to keep it. baronca.substack.com/p/the-studen...

New preprint out! As the UK plans to ban social media for under 16s, we show how the tone of awareness regarding mental health varies across topics and years during the Mental Health Awareness Month on Tik Tok. arxiv.org/abs/2606.13581

The Tone of Awareness: Topic, Sentiment, and Toxicity Maps During Mental Health Month on TikTok

Despite raising concerns about the mental health effects associated with the usage of TikTok, little is known about how related content is framed by creators and received by audiences. We collect the ...

arxiv.org

AI can reduce friction in academic work. But if the most powerful tools become increasingly expensive, the same technology may also help existing advantages compound. baronca.substack.com/p/the-subscr...

AI does not only make content cheaper to produce. It may also make consensus cheaper to manufacture. The next challenge for democracy may be artificial agreement, not only artificial information. I’ve written about this on Substack: baronca.substack.com/p/when-conse...

When consensus becomes cheap

The next challenge for democracy may not be fake information, but manufactured agreement.

baronca.substack.com

Our new correspondence argues that the impact of conversational AI won’t stay inside the screen. We need to understand how sustained human–LLM interactions shape connection, agency, resilience, and social life, so that these systems strengthen, rather than erode, our relationships with one another

It exists!

AI language does not only raise the question of truth and lies. It also raises the question of what happens when belonging can be simulated. I’ve written about it in Substack. substack.com/home/post/p-...

The problem of artificial belonging

AI language is not only a problem of truth and lies. It is also a problem of belonging.

substack.com

“It’s a massive data pipeline: phone metadata, location pings, SIM card swaps, app usage, social media behavior, sometimes even banking or facial recognition inputs. A lot is ‘scraped’ from commercial platforms, mobile networks, partner intelligence agencies, or spies on the ground..."

Inside Israel’s AI targeting system: How cellphone data becomes a death sentence | The Jerusalem Post

Ahmad Turmus got in his car, started it up, and drove off. Less than 30 seconds later came the shriek of the two missiles that lanced through his car.

jpost.com

Interdisciplinary PhD offer in Marseille, starting Oct. 2026, on "Collective Problem Solving in Guinea Baboons: From Dyadic Interactions to Group Dynamics" Project description and application website: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Docto... DM for more info on the position

Thrilled to announce CS2Nordics: the First Nordic Conference on Computational Social Science. Copenhagen, September 21-22, 2026. We invite all CSS researchers in the Nordics as well as in the international research community to submit 2-page abstracts by June 19: nosocss.org/conference.h....

New preprint out

Sagar Kumar@diesagar.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Are our evaluations actually measuring any stable properties of LLMs? 🧵

Interesting paper on the impact of blocklists on the Bluesky social graph. Self-recommending. (will read it again after coffee and likely have more to say then)

Keep pushing & don't forget the bigger picture :)

Travel grants 📣 For the 13th Toulouse Economics & Biology Workshop (June 1–2, 2026, @IAST) we have travel fellowships for PhDs & early-career researchers presenting a poster. Apply by Feb 27! Details: www.iast.fr/conferences/...

Science Advances: LLM populations develop social conventions through decentralized interactions alone. Most striking: collective biases emerge even when individual agents show NO bias. Group dynamics create preferences no single agent has. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu9368

This is a good metaphor for science.

At Stanford Feb 4–6 (GSB talk on the 4th). Around to chat about AI swarms, norms, collective alignment, and governance risks in multi-agent systems incl social media and blockchain. Ping or DM me.

Our new collective effort highlights what happens when AI acts in populations rather than as isolated tool. TL;DR: a lot.

Sander van der Linden@profsanderlinden.bsky.social · 7mo ago

We have a new paper in Science today on how malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy. AI systems can already coordinate autonomously, infiltrate communities, and fabricate social consensus. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Led by @kunstjonas.bsky.social & @daniel-thilo.bsky.social!

Tremendously important work...👇 How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @daniel-thilo.bsky.social @kunstjonas.bsky.social et al. AI swarms are can be used to engineering a "synthetic consensus" that can manipulate public opinion and perceptions.

Long overdue refresh of the SocioPatterns website! ✨ sociopatterns.org New content & datasets, and a chance to celebrate 17+ years of collabs, ~100 publications, 2000+ studies using our data. Thanks – more ahead! @alainbarrat.bsky.social @wouter-vdb.bsky.social @foolsdelight.bsky.social @isi.it

👇

Iyad Rahwan | إياد رهوان@iyadrahwan.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Machine+Behavior is back! Pls spread the word. 18-19 May Submission 8 Feb Speakers include: Tom Griffiths, Allan Dafoe, Thore Graepel, Laura Weidinger, Kinga Makovi, @baronca.bsky.social, @drkatedevlin.bsky.social, Emilio Calvano, Brian D. Earp, Christopher Summerfield machinebehavior.science

Happy to be hosting @baronca.bsky.social and Johan Bollen here this week at the @exeter.ac.uk @exetercompsci.bsky.social. After a work day, we had a chance to go for a drink and dinner with them (w/ @diogofpacheco.bsky.social)

Our review on multilayer network science is out on the arXiv. Thanks to all collaborators of the AccelNet MultiNet project, great working with you all 🙏 @alexvespi.bsky.social @ymoreno.bsky.social @lordgrilo.bsky.social @anduviera.bsky.social @baronca.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2511.23371

Multilayer network science: theory, methods, and applications

Multilayer network science has emerged as a central framework for analysing interconnected and interdependent complex systems. Its relevance has grown substantially with the increasing availability of...

arxiv.org

New preprint: More is different for AI multi-agent systems - but what does more mean? arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422 With @ariel-flint.bsky.social, @lajello.bsky.social and Romualdo Pastor-Satorras.

Nowadays, often the justification for choosing M$ is that it claims to be GDPR compliant, which just means that M$ can afford getting sued for any breach, which of course happens all the time. And universities don't care about potential breaches themselves, only about liability, which M$ absorbs.

Martin Plöderl@ploederl.bsky.social · 9mo ago

We had this discussion 25 years ago. A colleague calculated that they could hire a full-time administrator for Linux instead of paying the MS licences. Most thought of it as absurd idea ;-)

Group size effects and collective misalignment in LLM multi-agent systems arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422

Group size effects and collective misalignment in LLM multi-agent systems

Multi-agent systems of large language models (LLMs) are rapidly expanding across domains, introducing dynamics not captured by single-agent evaluations. Yet, existing work has mostly contrasted the be...

arxiv.org

New preprint: More is different for AI multi-agent systems - but what does more mean? arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422 With @ariel-flint.bsky.social, @lajello.bsky.social and Romualdo Pastor-Satorras.