Ian Axel Anderson
@aanixel.bsky.social
Postdoc @ Caltech Technology researcher, Surfer, Poet They/he
While a number of people here have convinced themselves that Haidt was persecuted based on what looks like decontextualized Meta meeting notes what's actually happening right now is a smear campaign against his much less powerful critics. candiceodgers.substack.com/p/no-i-was-n...
No. I was not paid to critique the Anxious Generation. I came to the conclusion that the science featured in it was flawed all on my own
I can’t believe I have to write this post
candiceodgers.substack.com
We tend to fixate on the impacts of tech on youth, but this is something I think about a lot too…and deserves more attention. Article link is in the comments on the original post.
Lizzie O'Leary@lizzieohreally.bsky.social · 2w agoIncredible story. nymag.com/intelligence...
Excited to be quoted in this cover story....happy to see the piece captured the nuance and scientific debate around heavy social media use.
Scientific American@sciam.bsky.social · 2w agoThe algorithms that run your feeds on social media are like “heat-seeking missiles that identify psychological vulnerability,” one psychologist told SciAm associate editor Allison Parshall. sciam.com/article/our-...
really strongly agree with this. it blows my mind when people don't do it
samuel mehr@mehr.nz · last mo.early-career academics, if you don't have a website, make yourself one. yes it's annoying but just do it it can be plain text on a white background, or google sites, or even a free Wix one with ads. nobody cares we just need to be able to look you up, quickly, bc there's like 100 other apps here
"The paper doesn't explain what parts are important. What parts are routine?” …this episode is a reminder that mathematics is about more than just finding a solution, said Maynard. "It wasn't about only answering this problem, it was about the human understanding behind it," he said.”
AI solved one of math's hardest problems. Humanity learned nothing (so far)
OpenAI beat humans to solving the Navier-Stokes problem, but mathematicians say the AI's solution isn't telling them much.
npr.org
“[The prosecution] was intended to silence speech about Palestine, and for everything that they threw at this case, they have failed.” quoted: Amy Zhai, one of the five students targeted in the prosecution www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Charges dropped against Stanford students over pro-Palestine protest
Students faced prison terms and thousands of dollars in restitution over campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza
theguardian.com
Really interesting work with longitudinal data, once again showing that aggregate effects of social media use producing changes in adult well-being aren't there (they do see evidence of the reverse direction): psychoftech.substack.com/p/what-we-ca... Full paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
What We Can Learn From a Multi-Wave Study of Social Technology Use and Well-Being Among U.S. Adults
On the surface, our results seem to support the perspective that social media use is not meaningfully related to users’ well-being. But we think that’s the wrong conclusion.
psychoftech.substack.com
is this a good time to talk about how the actual stanford prison experiment was biased and fake, or
DiscussingFilm@discussingfilm.net · 2mo agoNetflix has announced a new reality series titled ‘THE NEW STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT’. The series follows 30 participants who enter a real prison and are randomly assigned as guards or prisoners. They must see if they conform to the roles or if morality wins.
Bluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958
Middleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on Bluesky
Scholars have long proposed third-party middleware as an alternative to centralized algorithmic feeds: feeds built and distributed by independent feed creators. This vision saw no large-scale instanti...
arxiv.org
We were interested in studying the Bsky custom feed ecosystem, with a focus on feed creators, as arguably the first real instantiation of the vision of middleware providers for social media services like recommendation. The idea always seemed great in theory, but how sustainable is it really?
Tony Zhou@tyzhou.bsky.social · 2mo agoBluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958
Consumer data transparency policies rely on the companies holding the data to act responsibly and in good faith when customers ask to see it. Well, guess what
Reece@thiccreese.bsky.social · 2mo agoMy latest for @wired.com: I tried exercising my data access rights over 100 times and almost lost my sanity during the process. www.wired.com/story/i-dema...
Was great to discuss my research related to social media habits and addiction on @laist.com’s AirTalk yesterday morning. Episode is now available here: laist.com/news/social-...
Social media addiction and safety, Big Bear eagle Jackie dies, friendslop gaming and more
Today on AirTalk: Social media trial, what makes social media safe, Big Bear eagle Jackie dies, California ballot counting and friendslop gaming.
laist.com
We keep asking what social media does to voters. The wrong end of the pipe. Platforms don't just distribute politics — they teach political actors what kind of speech pays. So I measured the going rate: what X, Bluesky and Mastodon reward in public speech. 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2607.04220
The Trump administration tried to use visa denials and deportation to silence researchers who study social media. A court said no. Sunday Tagliasacchi and Elisabeth Snyder, former legal externs at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, break down the CITR v. Rubio ruling.
Trump Cannot Use Immigration Law to Silence Technology Researchers
Sunday Tagliasacchi and Elisabeth Snyder detail an initial court victory for the Coalition for Independent Technology Research in CITR v. Rubio.
buff.ly
Are you interested in smartphone interventions?📱 We are too. Specifically we were interested in increasing retention in a digital friction intervention. Let me tell you about our new preprint (1/n) with @dgruning.bsky.social @frederik.riedel.wtf @malte.the100.ci using one sec
Yes, this is 100% about censorship in general, and the current anti-sexual weirdness that’s going on. But a paragraph near the end of the article is especially telling… ASMR is primarily created by women. Women doing anything will always be perceived by some as inherently sexual (excerpt in comms)
Sam Cole@samleecole.bsky.social · 3mo agoa bunch of popular ASMR artists lost their channels forever this week, after YouTube cited them for violating terms against "sexually gratifying" content: www.404media.co/youtube-asmr...
AI's benefits are concentrated in a few companies and countries, but its footprint is distributed, argue Jamila Venturini and Marina Meira from Derechos Digitales. They call for a global infrastructure to hold the AI supply chain accountable.
From the AI Accountability Gap to a Global Accountability Infrastructure
The first UN Global Dialogue recognized the problem. The next step is building an architecture capable of addressing it, write Jamila Venturini & Marina Meira.
buff.ly
As a member of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research @thecoalition.bsky.social I’m proud to celebrate this important milestone alongside the researchers, advocates, journalists, fact-checkers, and trust and safety workers this policy threatened. knightcolumbia.org/content/fede...
Federal Court Suspends Trump Immigration Policy Targeting Technology Researchers
knightcolumbia.org
Teenage boys show major declines in suicide across the globe as their social media use grew 83% of countries with reliable reporting show plunging suicide rates by teenage boys as social media proliferated.
Teenage boys show major declines in suicide across the globe as their social media use grew
83% of countries with reliable reporting show plunging suicide rates by teenage boys as social media proliferated. Does social media actually prevent suicide?
mikemales.substack.com
The more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it is true. But please, don't believe everything you hear about teens today. Science and how well they are doing, despite the suffering of adults around them, tells a different story.
URGENT for California-based Scientists -- to pass the California Science Bond, which will help fund science in CA for years to come, we need to pressure Speaker Rivas to put the Bond up for a full vote in the State Assembly. Write a letter here! Takes 2 min :) actionnetwork.org/letters/stan...
Stand up for Science, Support SB 895
The California Science and Health Research Bond Act (SB 895) will create the California Foundation for Science and Health Research to ensure that life-saving and economically vital scientific, medical...
actionnetwork.org
“Instead of fixing the online world...we are punishing victims by taking away the places that they go to connect with friends, consume youth culture, and sadly, often escape people who are harming them offline.” NEW @candiceodgers.bsky.social Ted Talk: go.ted.com/candiceodgers #ConnectedLearning
What we're getting wrong about teens and tech
For years, the warning has been: smartphones are destroying a generation. But developmental psychologist Candice Odgers says that decades of data on teens tells a different story — violence, alcohol u...
go.ted.com
I literally don’t watch American coverage bc of lalas 😂 please say this is permanent lol
CJ Fogler@cjzero.bsky.social · 5mo agoRebecca: "Chaps, Alexi left us" Zlatan: "Who? Rebecca: "Alexi will be back, Alexi will be back with us very soon" Thierry: "Your plan worked, Rebecca" Rebecca: "Don't you bring me into this, no chance" Zlatan: "America, you're welcome" lmaooooooooooooooooo
'Enshittification' comes for all online products now, I guess... www.404media.co/lobotomized-...
‘Lobotomized’: Character.AI Is Showing What AI Enshittification Looks Like
Ads everywhere. Usage limits. Frustrating guardrails. Less model choice. Users of the Character.AI chatbot app are revolting after a series of changes they say have made the app worse.
404media.co
Was interesting to read up on the Yondr study, which found very negligible impact of using phone pouches in schools and hear from its author: Author interview: holdenthorp.substack.com/p/my-discuss... Piece on the Yondr pouches: holdenthorp.substack.com/p/social-med...
My discussion with Tom Dee, an author on the Yondr study on phones in schools
"If someone said they were disappointing, that would feel sensible to me"
holdenthorp.substack.com
Interesting report on 'dark patterns' in chatbot design: cdt.org/insights/dar...
Dark Patterns in AI Chatbots: A Taxonomy to Inform Better Design
In this report, CDT Research draws on prior work in human-computer interaction and deceptive design disciplines to investigate how established dark patterns documented in other digital technology cont...
cdt.org
Ian is trustworthy, and there are going to be people among the Minneapolis 15 who don't qualify for the Federal Public Defender and can't find a pro bono defense. Part of what the Feds are counting on is crushing defendants under massive legal costs to force them to flip and/or plead. Fight back.
Ian@mplsnightmayor.bsky.social · 5mo agoFundraiser for the 15 folks in Minnesota indicted yesterday for anti-ICE organizing, from a vetted source: chuffed.org/project/1865...
