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Daniel Thilo Schroeder

@daniel-thilo.bsky.social

Computers, graphs, and conspiracies: I'm a computational social scientist modeling global disinformation and conspiracy dynamics. Working on digital twins of human societies. Website: https://danielthiloschroeder.org/ Google Scholar: bit.ly/40rkhnL

32 Posts140 Follower104 Folgt
Jonas R. Kunst@kunstjonas.bsky.social · 6mo ago

The distinction between grassroots activism and automated influence is collapsing. We typically worry about "bot farms" or "troll factories." But a distinct, more complex threat is emerging. We call it "Cyborg Propaganda."

The Matrix of Coordinated Influence. Traditional frameworks for analyzing online influence focus on the distinction between human and automated actors (Identity Axis) or between spontaneous and coordinated behavior (Articulation Axis). Bot Nets (top-left) rely on synthetic identities and automated scripts. Troll Farms (bottom-left) use human operators to manage fake personas. Grassroots Action (bottom-right) involves verified citizens sharing self-authored views. Cyborg Propaganda (top-right) represents a new paradigm: verified human users disseminating centrally generated, algorithmically generated narratives, effectively ‘hybridizing’ the authenticity of the grassroots with the scale of the botnet.
Lukasz Olejnik@lukaszolejnik.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Pentagon used Anthropic's Claude in the operation to capture Maduro? The operation included bombing targets in Caracas. Anthropic: "we cannot comment on whether Claude was used for any specific operation." The "safe AI" company hit the battlefield faster than it could update its terms of service?

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Democracy doesn’t require perfect truth—but it does require something more fragile: independent voices. The “wisdom of crowds” depends on independence between judgments. If a single actor can speak through thousands of inauthentic accounts, the apparent consensus of the crowd stops being informative

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Michael Kreil@michaelkreil.bsky.social · 8mo ago

After years monitoring Twitter/X, I’ve gathered ~150 TB of research data on public discourse (Covid-19, Ukraine, George Floyd, etc.). X’s legal limits prevent sharing it with the scientific community. If you know lawful ways or partnerships to help us to make it research accessible, please reach out

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder@daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 11mo ago

This one is interesting. Apparently, there is still room for improvement when it comes to symbolic planning/reasoning. arxiv.org/abs/2509.13351

Teaching LLMs to Plan: Logical Chain-of-Thought Instruction Tuning for Symbolic Planning

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities across diverse tasks, yet their ability to perform structured symbolic planning remains limited, particularly in domains requirin...

arxiv.org

Daniel Thilo Schroeder@daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 11mo ago

I read about those a while ago, but I think it might make sense to invest some time again. Neural cellular automata are societies of tiny agents that preserve and repair global structure by propagating information locally. arxiv.org/abs/2509.11131

Neural cellular automata: applications to biology and beyond classical AI

Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) represent a powerful framework for modeling biological self-organization, extending classical rule-based systems with trainable, differentiable (or evolvable) update rul...

arxiv.org

Gordon Hodson@gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social · last yr.

This book looks great! Can't wait to read. (and thrilled to be a part of it. @nourkteily.bsky.social & I have a chapter on dehumanization you might be interested in!) #PrejudiceResearch #PsychSciSky Congrats to the Editors on curating such a strong list of chapters.

Jonas R. Kunst@kunstjonas.bsky.social · last yr.

Thrilled to share that The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Violent Extremism is now available. Milan Obaidi's and my goal was to create the book we missed as students—a complete overview over every major perspective in the field.

David Rand@dgrand.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨In PNAS🚨 The right often accuses fact-checkers of political bias But we analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and found posts flagged as "misleading" are 2.3x more likely to be written by Reps than Dems! The issue is Reps sharing misinformation, not fact-checker bias... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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David Colon@davidcolon.eurosky.social · last yr.

ALERTE : 19 chercheurs de très haut niveau alertent sur la menace que représentent pour les démocraties les essaims d’IA malveillantes (« Ai Swarms »), qui peuvent se coordonner, échapper à toute détection, créer des informations convaincantes, et manipuler les élections. 1/3

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Stefan Brenner@stefanbrenner.net · last yr.

Pre-print by @daniel-thilo.bsky.social et al. argues that the truth can be bent more quickly than it was in the past. I rarely go that far out on a limb, but in this case it is no longer a question of whether these scenarios will materialise. This is the world we live in and we need to prepare now.👇

Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel.bsky.social · last yr.

The combination of #artificialintelligence and #socialmedia poses a threat to democracy. Our new paper explains how AI swarms can fabricate grassroots consensus, fragment shared reality, engage in mass harassment, interfer with elections, and erode institutional trust: osf.io/preprints/os...