Important wake up call for folks who care about freedom of expression to go beyond the essential work of protecting freedoms to also grow the experience and exercise of those freedoms

John Sands@iohn.bsky.social · 4h ago

A new survey from @knightfoundation.org and @ssrsresearch.bsky.social reveals a disquieting decline in how free Americans feel to use the freedoms protected by the #FirstAmendment without government interference or punishment. 🧵

Introduction to a special issue on feminist metascience and open science by Christin Munsch and @divreyes.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/0891...

Live now! Join us!

Global Voices@globalvoices.org · last wk.

LIVE on August 4: Narratives about Indigenous Rights – Whose stories are being told across media ecosystems? https://ift.tt/hIZWfTv

Read more about our coalition's recent victory getting a US federal court to block an immigration policy targeting public interest technology researchers ⬇️ knightcolumbia.org/content/fede... @knightcolumbia.org @protectdemocracy.org

This September will mark 25 years since 9/11 and the inauguration of the “war on terror.” On Sept 9 & 10, join @knightcolumbia.org and the Li Center at @columbiajournalism.bsky.social for a major symposium about the war on terror’s legacy for democratic freedom. 1/ knightcolumbia.org/events/the-f...

The Forever War and the First Amendment

knightcolumbia.org

NEW: Trump’s coziness with AI oligarchs is a defining feature of his admin. But the AI companies reshaping our lives are also betting on the support of Democrats. We tracked close to 100 former Biden officials to their new jobs working in the AI industry:

Tracking the Revolving Door Between AI and Former Biden Officials | Revolving Door Project

This tracker was last updated on August 3, 2026.  The artificial intelligence industry is rapidly reshaping every facet of life, from the popularity of chatbots and disruption of the workplace to the ...

therevolvingdoorproject.org

Ultimate case study in how AI reduces creativity to generic cliches, as documented in multiple research studies.

Katie Drummond@katie-drummond.bsky.social · 2d ago

Not sure what else to say except: wildly embarrassing.

I couldn't even include everything in this piece (e.g., I got copies of presidential correspondence from AAU member institutions during the Red Scares from the archives) because my benevolent editor had already let me go way over my word limit. I wish they had learned from their past actions.

Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 2d ago

On the day that Barbara Synder, Douglas Girod and Ronald Daniels and the @aau.edu capitulated to the Trump administration, it's worth looking back at history. First. The Red Scare. @aau.edu was there to bend the knee to Senator Joe McCarthy and HUAC. 1/ www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Welcome to the closed society, as described by Karl Popper.

Social Media Lab@socialmedialab.ca · 2d ago

"The White House says its AI framework is done. It will not say what is in it. The framework gives the government a 30-day preview window on frontier models. The benchmarks are classified. The thresholds are classified. The framework itself is not classified, but it is not public either."

Quoted (with @zephoria.bsky.social and Jeff Hancock) in this @acm.org article about what happens when people retreat to AI over their social interactions -- the loss of friction, trust, and effort could be devastating. 1/ cacm.acm.org/news/is-ai-c...

Ohai @mitpress.bsky.social - happy to see our book on Auditing AI out in the wild!

"Kew Gardens has had a weather station since 1871. This July was, based on third party analysis of Met Office data collected at the site, the first calendar month on record where no rainfall was measured at Kew."

London's first month without rain

Plus: There's nowhere to bury the dead • London wants to keep its money • When will it stop being so damn hot • Who is to blame for turning off the air conditioning in the tower block?

londoncentric.media

This was fun. The only shame of an audio-only format is that you probably can't hear the eye rolls. That said, I think the rise of regional tech policy and (hopefully) the end of announcement-itis might both be things to look forward to. (Also @gavinfreeguard.com's memory is a thing to behold.)

James Ball@jamesrball.com · 3d ago

Some UK tech policy podcasting for your weekend – @justinhendrix.bsky.social talks through Andy Burnham's first moves on tech with @gavinfreeguard.com, @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social and me. Available here, and wherever you get your pods.

If you know a manager who actually wants to prioritize reliable, accurate AI, tell them to check out our book Auditing AI. And if they refuse to test their systems, our book is a helpful guide to journalists, citizens, and public servants seeking accountability. auditingai.cc

Home - Auditing AI -- The Book

How tech companies, journalists, and policymakers can prevent AI decision-making from going wrong. How tech companies, journalists, and policymakers can

auditingai.cc

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 3d ago

“The AI assistant, which Kinney Drugs named Burt, after its founder, was built by a third-party AI pharmaceutical company, Synerio. In the pharmacy’s terms, Kinney Drugs states that ‘Burt may not be accurate, complete or up-to-date and may be misleading or contain errors and omissions.’”

Anyone headed to #JSM2026 next week? Let's talk data storytelling and/or ecological modeling!

Hello statisticians of Bluesky, I'm attending the Joint Statistical Meetings for the first time and would love to say hello! I'll be speaking on community science on Monday at 10:30 and would love to connect with others who working on AI + behavior + rights + participatory science #JSM2026

Corallus Meeks, editor-in-chief of The Tattler, recently wrote an op-ed in support of New Voices legislation. “Democracy does not begin when someone turns eighteen and walks into a voting booth. It begins when children learn their voice wields power,” Meeks wrote.

Guest Opinion: Democracy Begins in Student Newsrooms

Journalism serves as an outlet for my passion for social justice. It has fundamentally shaped the way I understand democracy, social justice, and my own responsibility within both. It has

ithaca.com

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...

Spending this warm July evening making a list of AI CEOs who have signed open letters fretting about the risks of AI and then continued to develop AI.

"I’m not sure what these students should be learning... Increasingly, I find myself asking not simply whether students can do the work, but whether they should want to do the work. So much is surveillance & extraction" Carl DiSalvo, Georgia Tech underthecircumstances.substack.com/p/fall-teach...

Fall Teaching (Part 1: Before)

Plenty of us of are wondering if we’re participating in a profession, a community, a society, that’s becoming something else.

underthecircumstances.substack.com

Am late in finding this 2025 study showing that prompting Instagram users to share in others' positive emotions while scrolling had a significant impact on their wellbeing (d=0.25). As much as watching a 10 min video about dam-building beavers. :-) static1.squarespace.com/static/550b0...

According to Bloomberg, the European Commission plans to designate Roblox and OpenAI's ChatGPT as very large online platforms (VLOPS) under the DSA. VLOPS are subject to more stringent reporting rules. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

ChatGPT, Roblox to Fall Under Strictest EU Rules for Platforms

OpenAI’s ChatGPT and video game company Roblox Corp. will be subject to stricter scrutiny and monitoring requirements under the European Union’s content moderation rules after surpassing a threshold o...

bloomberg.com

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...

New Studies: How Commercial Forces Make Science Less Reliable

Computational social science has been distorted by commercial forces, and AI is making it worse.

citizensandtech.org

Actual good news alert!

Brian Barrett@brbarrett.bsky.social · last wk.

Ebay’s harassment spree against a perfectly nice couple in Massachusetts is one of the craziest stories I’ve ever covered. Six years later, the victims have finally gotten their due. from @laurengoode.bsky.social

We are delighted that the audio edition of The Four Heavens, written by @davidsstuart.bsky.social and read by Timothy Andrés Pabon, has been selected as one of Spotify's Best Indie Books of the Year So Far! Explore the full list and add The Four Heavens to your library here: buff.ly/nJARHUr

Today CAT Lab tested "confidence" ratings for results we share with community partners based on how much we think our findings generalize. Many thanks @sarahagilbert.bsky.social & @pavunath.bsky.social for this innovation! 🟢 High Confidence 🟡 Moderate Confidence 🔴 Descriptive - we cannot generalize

"Our results show a fundamental mismatch between the justifications for intensified immigration enforcement & the empirical patterns of that enforcement’s implementation." This valuable study puts so many communities' experiences in context. The data will also be so useful for others. Thank you!

Chloe N East (she/her)@chloeneast.bsky.social · last wk.

My paper is out today in PNAS documenting how ICE activity in Trump 2.0 compares to the last 10 years and the mismatch between the action and the rhetoric. Joint with the fabulous @caitlinpatler.bsky.social and @elizabethacox.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Found this from @natematias.bsky.social during a purge of [months of] browser tabs and reading lists. It's so good I want to post it now so the people who will benefit from it have it for the next round of horrible coverage. natematias.medium.com/the-manacle-...

The Manacle, the Network, and the Tree

New Epstein revelations have many in science asking me “how can things be different?”

natematias.medium.com

Take care folks - wildfire smoke is coming back <3 www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026...

The wildfire smoke is back, filling skies as far south as Florida

Some will waft across a 2,500-mile path that includes the Plains, Midwest and East as dozens of uncontained fires burn across Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

washingtonpost.com

I wrote this the other day arguing AI means the humanities become even more important in an age where AI can solve questions that are defined and data rich, leaving the wicked issues where we can’t even agree on the nature of the problem… www.ft.com/content/fbde...