Sat down to write about the Hugging Face/AI incident. Ended up drawing this instead.

Good god. Trump fired the entire National Science Board without explanation on Friday afternoon.

Entire NSF science advisory board fired by Trump administration

Members of the National Science Board, which the US Congress founded in 1950, were given no explanation for their termination.

nature.com

I've built a free open-source intelligence dashboard tracking every coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB) operation Meta has disclosed since 2018. 214 operations. 53 origin countries. $22.7M in ad spend. 71 reports analysed. Access it here! marcowenjones.substack.com/p/i-created-... #disinfo

I created a free interactive dashboard documenting all META's influence operation takedowns

A searchable database and interactive dashboard collating all META's CIB and ATP reports

marcowenjones.substack.com

New working paper: Rethinking Misinformation Interventions. The field has spent years searching for the one intervention that will solve misinformation. This search is the wrong approach — and our disappointment says more about our expectations than our tools. (1/5) osf.io/preprints/so...

The real story is that foreign govts try to "interfere" all the time. In 2020 and 2024 we had mechanisms to catch them, call them out, & mitigate damage. Now, those mechanims are gone & the Trump admin would prefer to exploit "foreign interference" to justify a federal take-over of elections.

Kate Starbird@katestarbird.bsky.social · 5mo ago

OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers "censors" ... and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.

imagine having one of the best tech reporters of all time on your staff and then choosing to lay them off

nitasha tiku@nitasha.bsky.social · 6mo ago

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

We just shipped image classification on Zentropi! You can write your criteria in plain English, then analyze images against them at scale using cope-b-12b, a new multimodal model we trained Critically, @samidh.bsky.social used it to make a cat detector: blog.zentropi.ai/zentropi-now-labels-images/

Zentropi Now Labels Images

Building guardrails for visual content just got a lot easier. Today we're launching image classification on Zentropi and announcing cope-b-12b, a multimodal model that powers this experience.

blog.zentropi.ai

Reminder: our Techdirt fundraiser is going on right now. Unlike some, we won't pull, or even water down, the stories we write about CECOT.

Mike Masnick@masnick.com · 8mo ago

Hey folks: this morning we're launching a monthlong fundraiser for @techdirt.com. Over the last year, we've been steadfast in not self-censoring, not capitulating, not sanewashing bullshit. But that's come at a cost. And we need help: rtb.techdirt.com/products/fri...

In case you missed this earlier this week, our team put out a report documenting our approach to "rapid research" during elections, crises, & other breaking news events. It demonstrates a role for university researchers — relying on contextual and methodological expertise — to act as "sensemakers".

Kate Starbird@katestarbird.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Since 2020, our team has iterated on a model for “rapid research” to help surface, analyze, & resolve rumors about election administration. This work demonstrates an innovative role for researchers to support public sensemaking during rapidly unfolding events. uw.pressbooks.pub/rapidresearc...

My second post about researchers’ rights to scrape data under DSA Article 40.12 is up! This is dense with legal arguments for researchers to use if they get sued. Or to show their lawyers before that. www.techpolicy.press/how-the-mean... verfassungsblog.de/dsa-fine-x-r...

How the Meaning of 'Publicly Accessible' Shapes Researcher Data Rights Under the DSA | TechPolicy.Press

Researchers eager to begin work under DSA Article 40(12) may be deterred by uncertainty about what data counts as 'publicly accessible,' writes Daphne Keller.

techpolicy.press

This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites. The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.

And perhaps worse than their inherent weaknesses, these tools are their outputs are being actively manipulated by influence operations that exploit ambiguous events for political gain. bsky.app/profile/benc...

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 8mo ago

This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites. The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.

Gen AI tools are not good sources for information during rapidly unfolding, novel events. Words associations aren't helpful for discovering ground truth. These tools are more likely to echo and contribute to the inherent uncertainty and ambiguity of crisis events.

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Elon Musk's AI robot is spewing misinformation about the Bondi Beach shooting

Absolutely chilling read (as a disinformation researcher): The systematic crackdown on disinformation scholars, newsrooms, factcheckers and NGO’s. All in the name of so-called free speech. By @jamesrball.com @theverge.com www.theverge.com/features/839...

The disinformation wars are here

How Joe Biden’s administration caved to the right in the battle for truth.

theverge.com

Don't let anyone tell you that the Commission's DSA enforcement against X is about speech or censorship. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring laws that would get bipartisan support in the U.S. (I bet similar bills *have* had that support.) 1/

Hey all, The Onion is accepting applicants for our writing, video and graphics fellowships. Fellowships last six months, pay well, and provide full benefits. You can apply at theonion.com/fellowship.

Two years into Europe’s Digital Services Act, data access for researchers is on life support, write Mark Scott and LK Seiling. Yet an alternative future is possible—one built on openness, interoperability, and platforms that treat data access as a civic and scientific good.

In Critical Condition – How To Stabilize Researcher Data Access? | TechPolicy.Press

Mark Scott and LK Seiling discuss the struggle for researcher access to social media data and an alternative future where transparency is seen as a civic good.

techpolicy.press

Not sure about everyone else, but I’m encouraged today (elated?) that we learned last night that we can beat candidates/parties of bullshit, AI slop, corruption, and authoritarianism without emulating them and without tacking towards a false center between us and them.

Just thinking back to how I was feeling a year ago. This is better.

Normal people are just sick to fucking death of the cruelty and meanness

The Associated Press@apnews.com · 9mo ago

BREAKING: Colorado voters approved a ballot measure that would raise state income taxes on higher-earning households to fund free meals for all public school students. Follow AP for live updates.

Good things are possible and we don’t have to settle.

Kat Abughazaleh@katmabu.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Good things are possible and we don’t have to settle.

mamdani is human. he'll fuck up and fail, especially with a hostile press and the giant mess that is nyc's politics. but today is a great day for the brave women who told what cuomo did, and for those of us who care that it should matter. that power shouldn't go to those who hurt the poweless.

Victor Ray@victorerikray.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I'm happy that Mamdani won. But I won't let that get in the way of my celebrating Cuomo losing.

Who can take advantage of the DSA’s protections for researchers? Ultimately, protecting legitimate online research overall will require navigating legal barriers beyond the DSA, writes Daphne Keller. buff.ly/fdUwxOH

If I were running the DNC, there would be Democratic Party sponsored food relief banks across the country right now that specifically welcomed anyone regardless of party affiliation. Along with the food, there could be voter registration and links to runforsomething.net

GreenEarth is creating open source AI-driven recommender infrastructure for BlueSky. Type a prompt, see your feed change. We are here for the users, the builders, the dreamers. Join us. greenearthsocial.substack.com/p/introducin...

Introducing GreenEarth

We're building advanced open source algorithms for social media

greenearthsocial.substack.com

🖥️ 📈 The SMM market thrives on secrecy. Some tools have privileged access, most scrape, few disclose. We need standards that put the public interest first. Read the report by @cmilez.bsky.social, @brandonsilverman.bsky.social, and @annalenhart.bsky.social at iddp.gwu.edu/dashboard-data-acquisition

From Dashboard to Data Acquisition | Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics (IDDP) | Columbian College of Arts & Sciences | The George Washington University

Researchers increasingly require data from social media companies to better understand the information environment, technology product design, & social issues.

iddp.gwu.edu

"Because the wolfhound century is on us now, and we have to choose how to face it."

Tal Lavin@swordsjew.bsky.social · 11mo ago

"The country we knew isn’t here anymore except to the extent that we knew it, and if anyone is going to remember what it meant or what it could have been, it will only be because people like you and me find a way to tell them." buttondown.com/theswordandt...

I have never seen so many public servants protest the mismanagement of a government. Trumpists will point to this as proof of the deep state, but the reality is that these are professionals who are desperately trying to get the public to understand how bad things are.

Dan Murphy@bungdan.bsky.social · 11mo ago

AP live feed of the CDC walkout in Atlanta. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ7Q...

New report out from IDDP on using pervasive data ethically in research — I was grateful for the opportunity to contribute. Congrats to @annalenhart.bsky.social!

Anna Lenhart@annalenhart.bsky.social · last yr.

GWU IDDP organized a Council to reflect on the comments submitted to NTIA’s Request For Comment (RFC) regarding Ethical Guidelines for Research Using Pervasive Data. Check out the findings here: iddp.gwu.edu/ethical-use-...

🚨 Workshop update 🚨 We're excited to announce that @naomishiffman.bsky.social will be joining to share her experience with designing and passing implementable tech policy. Our half-day agenda is up (ci-x-tp.github.io) and early registration for @acmci.bsky.social ends on 23 June — don’t miss out!

Jason W. Burton@jasonburton.bsky.social · last yr.

(1/4) Ever wondered what tech policy might look like if it were informed by research on collective intelligence and complex systems? 🧠🧑‍💻 Join @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @lukethorburn.com, and myself in San Diego on Aug 4th for the Collective Intelligence x Tech Policy workshop at @acmci.bsky.social!