Hey disinformation professionals: Any sense of the accuracy of claims that Yandex data center destruction has led to dramatic drop in social media astroturfing bot content?
Nancy Baym
@nancybaym.bsky.social
30+ years of digital media research. Wrote a few books. Dog, lake, and mountain lover, embroiderer, taker of nature snapshots, campervan enthusiast, sweet on music. She/her.
On the one hand: Conference FOMO On the other hand: I don’t have to work anymore
Bird Jumping For Joy
Alt: Bird Jumping For Joy on a laptop keyboard
static.klipy.com
Which tech platforms are going to participate in making this happen?
Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 4d agoWASHINGTON (AP) - Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed in December.
What are people’s takes on Tidal’s recommendation algorithms? Having been boxed into a “trust us, she will only like relaxed French pop” corner by another service that will remain nameless I am giving it a whirl in hopes it might offer more eclecticism.
That dream of extra rooms showing up in my house only instead of being dusty and hidden behind weird stairways and dodgy landings, they were huge, beautiful, and unexpectedly easy to access. I guess this is the retirement edition.
Some decades I just get so tired of trying to persuade people to think sensibly about technology.
I have so many thoughts on tech leaders wanting everything messy to be an engineering problem. People and society are not engineering problems.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w agoJensen Huang: "We all need to hope it's an engineering problem. If it's not an engineering problem, it's not solvable."
Learned today that our son uses index cards for recipes. “I feel like a grandma,” he said, “but grandmas know how to do things.”
Raise your hand if now and then you still miss 2007 Twitter.
For my followers who also have celiac disease: the allergen is wheat.
FactPost@factpostnews.bsky.social · 2w agoThe FDA has announced a recall of 1.7 million pounds of sugar due to contamination with allergens.
I guess everyone in the northeast who looked up got an eyeful of awe inspiring sky this evening
Very weird incoming storm lighting including a double rainbow in an orange blue sky
The Nor’easter cancelling Ed Sheeran’s concerts at Gillette Stadium is hilarious.
"Archiving Machines" is this year's @aoir.bsky.social Nancy Baym Book Award winner! Congratulations to author Amelia Acker and the Information Society Series editors on this incredible honor.
Michael Zimmer@michaelzimmer.bsky.social · 3w agoThis is the 2nd year in a row that a book from our "Information Society Series" at @mitpress.bsky.social has won the AoIR award. Sinnreich and Gilbert's "The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance" won in 2025 mitpress.mit.edu/series/the-i... 2/2
In personal news … socialmediacollective.org/2026/09/23/s...
The Social Media Collective Comes to a Close
It is with both celebration and sadness that we announce that the Social Media Collective, our research team of critical, humanistic social sciences at Microsoft Research’s New England lab, is comi…
socialmediacollective.org
Help? If I wanted to create a system where people could book time with me on a calendar that was integrated with a video call app, what are the best least panopticony ways to do that these days?
The restaurant below this hotel used to be a music venue and claims to be the site where Black Sabbath wrote “War Pigs.”
Sometimes art just messes you up and rearranges you in the best way. Simultaneously drained and renewed after encountering Pixelwald en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixelwald
Pixelwald - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
There are a number of folks who have written extensively on this problem. The fact the critique isn't better known is in part because the critics don't have the money and media power of the AI lobby. Also they're often women, BIPOC, queer, or some combination of all three.
Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social · 4w agoThe AI debate has forced me, somewhat agst my will, to grapple a bit more closely with the "longtermists", basically a movement or subculture of morons who propose novel forms of moral reasoning based on sci-fi ideas they imagine might happen hundreds, thousands or millions of years in the future.
Protest sign by the train tracks read (in German) “My food. My choice. No to forced veganism” Forced veganism? Really?
Prerecorded train message just announced we are now moving through a “wildly romantic” valley.
speaking of which, as the editor of @journal.transformativeworks.org please somebody write me something about the HP fanfic to AI doomer pipeline going on here. you can throw in all the Tolkien references from the other side of tech bro meets fandom too.
Lincoln Michel@thelincoln.bsky.social · 4w agoTurns out being a Harry Potter fan fic writer doesn't prepare you for this