WIRED has made this article free for all to read because it is primarily based on reporting from Freedom of Information Act requests. Read the full story: www.wired.com/story/ice-dn...

ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children

Internal documents show ICE's DNA collection has skyrocketed in the second Trump administration. Now hundreds of thousands of people never convicted of a crime are in an FBI criminal database forever.

wired.com

Last week, the Penn Program on Regulation hosted a webinar on administrative governance following Trump v. Slaughter, featuring @cary-coglianese.bsky.social, Brian Feinstein, @donmoyn.bsky.social, @kateshaw.bsky.social & Christopher Yoo. Check out the video on our YouTube channel: buff.ly/ptDYMhN

The European Commission accepted X's corrective action plan under the DSA this month. Luka Bekavac and Alice Palmieri analyse whether the measures will give researchers the data needed to audit systemic risks.

What X's Corrected Action Under the DSA Fixes on Data Access, and What's Left Open

Luka Bekavac and Alice Palmieri examine whether X's DSA corrective measures will give researchers the data needed to audit systemic risks.

buff.ly

That's a wrap on IC2S2 2026... we'll see you next year in Milan! 😍

Google didn't just add AI to Google Earth—it briefly turned one of the world's most trusted sources of evidence into a generator of plausible fakes. shirin anlen & Sam Gregory from WITNESS on a foreseeable fiasco, and why tech firms must consult civil society experts before launch, not after.

Google Earth AI Fiasco Underscores Why Tech Firms Must Listen to Outside Experts

It's just one more parable in a long line of product releases by AI firms with potentially dangerous consequences, write shirin anlen and Sam Gregory.

techpolicy.press

Our new JCMC paper - led by Hsuen-Chi Chiu - looks at privacy attitudes when chatting with AI companions. Based on interviews with 15 chatbot users, we argue that there is a paradox - people trust their AI friends but distrust the corporations that run them! academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...

Chatting with confidants or corporations? Privacy management with AI companions

Abstract. AI companion chatbots feel like intimate confidants but exist as part of corporate data systems. Drawing on Communication Privacy Management (CPM

academic.oup.com

I remember seeing someone (very reasonably) complaining here a few days ago that there seems to be next to no visible thinking on left and center about how to join the dots on administration and democracy. This is the beginnings of an answer to that complaint donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...

Rebuilding Democracy Requires Rebalancing Power

What does a power-shifting agenda look like?

donmoynihan.substack.com

Google didn't just add AI to Google Earth—it briefly turned one of the world's most trusted sources of evidence into a generator of plausible fakes. shirin anlen & Sam Gregory from WITNESS on a foreseeable fiasco, and why tech firms must consult civil society experts before launch, not after.

Google Earth AI Fiasco Underscores Why Tech Firms Must Listen to Outside Experts

It's just one more parable in a long line of product releases by AI firms with potentially dangerous consequences, write shirin anlen and Sam Gregory.

techpolicy.press

My boiling hot take on this is that, if tech companies are going to fund this kind of research (looking at Schmidt too), then the money needs to be given *no strings* to an independent arm's length research body, pooled with other funding, and treated as a donation not as direct funding.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 5d ago

Anthropic AI research fund offers $5m - $30m for social science research on themes of AI impact on workers; transition initiatives; income support; building worker stakes; and wider evidence on public investments. Total fund of $200m available www.anthropic.com/news/economi...

Too Lazy to Read the Paper just passed 10,000 downloads (17,873 if we count YouTube). Not bad for unedited, hour-long conversations with my favorite scientists. The whole story, including both season trailers – one features me on a ukulele: sunelehmann.com/blog/too-laz...

Proprietary models/platforms may block the replicability part. However, reliability and robustness are a measurement validity problem; social scientists are trying to find a consensus on it. I will be presenting on this issue tomorrow, and my work is auditing the instruments we use to audit models.

Let me start by changing my own practices! 🤦‍♂️ But I think the recent reporting checklist paper at NHB (led by @sfeuerriegel.bsky.social) is relevant to the discussion. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science - Nature Human Behaviour

Large language models offer new opportunities for behavioural science, but their rapid evolution poses challenges for research rigour. We introduce a consensus-based reporting checklist to improve tra...

nature.com

Absolutely required reading for computational social scientists e.g. people at #ic2s2 this week

J. Nathan Matias@natematias.bsky.social · last wk.

When people seek guidance from science, they expect it to work more than once. I have TWO new articles on commercial forces & proprietary models that make science less reliable, with pointers to communities and ideas that might help. This post offers a summary: citizensandtech.org/2026/07/comm...

(feel free to complain to me to) And for the #IC2S2 crowd, I'll also point to the work of the Coalition of Independent Technology Research in helping protect CSS research & researchers, and encourage you to join the organization. independenttechresearch.org

J. Nathan Matias@natematias.bsky.social · last wk.

I hope folks have a great time at #ic2s2 this week! So say hi to @davidlazer.bsky.social if you're interested in thinking about how to make computational social science more repeatable, and feel free to complain to me about any errors in our work: citizensandtech.org/2026/07/comm...

Important food for thought for the #IC2S2 community, as we convene the next several days. How replicable/reliable/robust is the science we do? How do we build collective capacity and frameworks that facilitates a science that is cumulative?

J. Nathan Matias@natematias.bsky.social · last wk.

When people seek guidance from science, they expect it to work more than once. I have TWO new articles on commercial forces & proprietary models that make science less reliable, with pointers to communities and ideas that might help. This post offers a summary: citizensandtech.org/2026/07/comm...

When a major strategic victory in war is achieved by drone attacks on e-commerce hubs then you know the 20th century is well in the rear-view mirror

Igor Sushko@igorsushko.bsky.social · 2w ago

💥 Ukraine has destroyed both the Wildberries and Ozon e-commerce fulfillment centers that serve Saint Petersburg in Russia. Damage should exceed $2 billion.

If you're not sick of me and my book yet, here we are on the New Books Network www.google.com/url?q=https:...

New at the Strength In Numbers Data Lab: How pollsters weight by party ID is influencing Democrats' midterm standing. Different methodologies give a margin anywhere between D+7 and D+10 (among registered voters — likely even higher among likely voters). www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-07-23...

Democrats' edge in midterms polling depends on how pollsters weight by party

What would our Strength In Numbers polling say if we weighted our samples by different targets for party identity?

gelliottmorris.com

Once you understand that this is a model of science written by non-scientists who hate universities but love venture capital and redirecting money to political allies, everything makes a lot more sense. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/u...

Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities

Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.

nytimes.com

Yeah so this is not good. Thanks to @jeremymberg.bsky.social For speaking out…I would argue that great strides have been made in human health and this is a bad direction to go in…… www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/u...

Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities (Gift Article)

Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.

nytimes.com

Tutorial on NIO @ic2s2.bsky.social Tuesday! Hope to see you there.

How to obtain data for CSS research in the Post-API age? And what if you can access a treasure trove of cross-platform, cross-device online activity data for your research? 👀 Come to our @ic2s2.bsky.social 2026 Tutorial in Vermont in ~3 weeks! (organized w/ @davidlazer.bsky.social) (1/7)

I found the "OMG AI ISN'T SEARCH WE LOSE SOMETHING INEXPRESSIBLE ABOUT THE HUMAN SPIRIT IF WE'RE NOT USING THE SPECIFIC GOOGLE DOT COM I MADE MY FANCY TECH CAREER ON DON'T LOOK TOO CLOSELY YOU'LL REALIZE IT WAS ADS THE WHOLE TIME" stuff really annoying on here the other day so here is a comparison

Cat Hicks@grimalkina.bsky.social · 3w ago

I really have no patience left for design speculation without empiricism

"Strikingly, we find the survey’s screener race variable, ubiquitous in prior research, is never empirically preferred based on model fit." Just out in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social

Sociological Science@sociologicalsci.bsky.social · 4w ago

NEW: Emma Williams-Baron, Aliya Saperstein, "A Roadmap for Inequality Research: Transparency, Intersectionality, and Multiple Measures of Race" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

On Courage book tour has begun!! Dates and locations below. I’ll also share links prior to each event, but wanted to list the whole schedule for anyone interested.

Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...

Trump administration limits student visas to four years, changing longstanding policy - The Boston Globe

The new rule, which also restricts the international students’ ability to transfer schools or change majors without approval in their first year, will go into effect in mid-September.

bostonglobe.com

The free version of ChatGPT automatically searches the web. The prompt "What are the most relevant sources for the claim that LLMs hallucinate?" returns the following. All those link buttons in the output are live hyperlinks that were found, not generated. If this isn't a search engine, what is it?

Laura K. Nelson@lauraknelson.bsky.social · 3w ago

I'm once again begging everyone to update their priors. "ChatGPT is not a search engine." Yes, yes it is. It actively searches the web based on your prompt, and returns active links relevant to your search/prompt. It's a search engine. It is. (Obvs don't use it that way if that's not your thing)

New commentary at @natrevpsychol.nature.com with Alexis Palmer, @natematias.bsky.social, and @mjcrockett.bsky.social: Proprietary LLMs impede scientific transparency and reproducibility. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1038/s441...

Text as Data has been a wonderful, long-running, non-archival workshop for empirical research at the intersection of AI and social science (especially work involving text). After a few years off, it will be happening again this year as a one-day event in early October!

Denis@dpeskoff.bsky.social · 3w ago

Do you work across computational methods, social sciences, and the humanities? Submit to Text as Data 2026! 📄 One-page submissions 🔓 Non-archival ⏰ Due August 1 📍 October 5 @UCBerkeley tada2026.org

Excellent post from @pamherd.bsky.social and @donmoyn.bsky.social on NYC’s new PIT Crews—and on what becomes possible when technology serves inclusive, democratic policy aims like affordability, rather than becoming the aim itself. Rooting for the PIT Crews!

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 3w ago

New w @pamherd.bsky.social: Mamdani just announced PIT Crew — an NYC tech unit that will build digital public products. Takeaway: Mamdani is reclaiming a vision of tech in govt for progressives, one not driven by consultants and which solves real problems. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/mamdani-in...

Nice overview of our open-access book, Auditing AI in @the-renovator.bsky.social www.democracyrenovator.com/p/july-13-te... mitpress.mit.edu/978026205172...