Nathalie Van Raemdonck
@nathalievanraemdonck.com
Social media networks and social norms, freshly minted PhD from Brussels University (VUB). Belgian living in Barcelona, internet night crawler, STS
16 years ago, @zizip.bsky.social wrote "Privacy as a Luxury Commodity." www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph... The Discourse is finally catching up.
Opinion | Taylor Swift was able to buy her privacy at MSG. What about the rest of us?
Reports that Madison Square Garden temporarily shut off its facial recognition system for Swift’s wedding expose a glaring problem with how the elite wield and control mass surveillance.
ms.now
Policymakers HAVE the toolbox with the DSA to regulate social media to protect children. Bans are signs of lazy politicians trying to score brownie points with their electorate.
LSE European Politics@lseeuroppblog.bsky.social · 4w agoShould the EU ban young people from accessing social media? ✍ Elisabeth Staksrud @giovannamas.bsky.social Brian O'Neill & @sonialivingstone.bsky.social @lsemedia.bsky.social @eukidsonline.bsky.social blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2...
As requested by @liabelle.me here are all the unique features of @mu.social which I will keep up to date as we progress
Unique Mu.social features
The unique features of Mu.Social which I will keep up to date.
leaflet.pub
In case anyone is curious to study how network effects lose critical mass, search inclusion is a good opportunity to update scientific theories of collective action
Rachel Holliday Smith@rachelholliday.bsky.social · 4w agoI'm been wondering if it would come to this and apparently it has. huge move from cloudflare, which hosts a fifth of all websites on earth.
Never read Babel as a cautionary tale against empire, where the punishment of plurality in languages was a "refusal to let one order claim the whole future". Great cautionary tale on AI, building a system that grows past our understanding will be the consequence of our own actions.
Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · 4w agoThe real AI hazard isn't just misalignment, argue Jules Polonetsky and Omer Tene. It's Babel: teaching ourselves to treat "speech as output, judgment as computation and persons as data." The idol diminishes us before it ever comes alive.
WOW -- Danish reporter *goes there* with Rutte "You sit next to Trump when he talks about conquering Greenland, lashes out at allies like Spain -- things it doesn't seem like the old Mark Rutte would approve of. Does this have any affect on your self-respect when you sit there and say nothing?"
I missed the initial convo here about the CJEU ruling that platforms are no longer exempt from liability over their algorithmic control of content, but the potential implications are so big! @kellyfincham.bsky.social www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...
Has the clock started ticking for social media algorithms?
Algorithms are opaque, they optimise for the wrong things — engagement, virality, outrage — and they’re not neutral
irishexaminer.com
This paper about the publicly available data that is missing from Meta's and TikTok's research tools/APIs, by Luka Bekavac and Simon Mayer, is super interesting. And this graphic is a doozy. arxiv.org/html/2601.12...
actually macron and others know a ban won’t work to curb the way social media companies target/commodify kids. but remarkably it’s Meloni who says it.
Meloni says Italian government won’t push for social media ban on kids
Prime minister says ban can be ’easily circumvented.’
politico.eu
Our statement on the UK gov't's demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification & content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. signal.org/blog/pdfs/20...
signal.org
wrote in 2024 already for @sampolmaandblad.bsky.social why Eurovision is so important for Israel and how it has weaponized the competition for information warfare purposes. nathalievanraemdonck.com/2024/05/23/t...
The Eurovision Song Contest as an information war battlefield
The presence of Israel in the 2024 Eurovision song contest has generated a lot of protest, but Israel’s participation is an important part of its ‘Hasbara’ strategy to keep being …
nathalievanraemdonck.com
Ben Goggin@bengoggin.bsky.social · 3mo ago"Israel’s efforts to influence Eurovision’s vote were broader and started years earlier than previously known... Israel spent at least $1M on Eurovision marketing. Some of that money came from Mr. Netanyahu’s 'hasbara' office, a euphemism for overseas propaganda" www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/w...
"When political pressure determines whether people can gather, it doesn't just limit movement—it reshapes how we think, how we make decisions, and how we relate to one another. It isolates us, creates distance, and fuels tension, all while shrinking the already fragile space for civil society."
Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · 3mo agoTo learn more about the demise of this year's RightsCon gathering, I spoke to the executive director of Access Now, Alejandro Mayoral Baños, and the director of RightsCon, Nikki Gladstone, about their experience, why this moment matters, and what's next for the community they convene.
Julia Angwin says Meta, "one of the most powerful media organizations in the world and one of the most valuable members of the S&P 500 — is at the start of a long, slow decline that will trigger aftershocks to our economy and our society." (Kudos to the graphic artist, very Monty Python.)
Opinion | Meta Is Dying
nytimes.com
🚨🚨 #Bluesky is doing very well. @ec.europa.eu has changed some of their policies in respect of interaction with social media & are now prioritising #Mastodon, Bluesky & #linkedin. #X has been completely been removed from the "Follow" function (whilst FB & youtube is at the bottom of the page).
Every splashy New York Times profile of a right wing influencer.
Could Americans really create the first ever public aviation transport? Very much here for this socialism experiment 🔥 #spirit2.0 letsbuyspiritair.com
Spirit 2.0 — The Airline Owned by the People, for the People
Spirit Airlines collapsed. Before private equity locks it up, the people can own it. Join the Spirit 2.0 founding coalition. One member, one vote. Profits shared by all.
letsbuyspiritair.com
an extremely funny thing about it is that it's a cluster of "stop fedposting, stop sephiroth-posting about violence, win political power and then make change" accounts, 95% of whom are on various "centrist coward shitlib" leftist bluesky lists
Micah@rincewind.run · 3mo agogoing to be completely honest here this is not the first account cluster I would have guessed for a guy who just tried what this guy did and I’m not just saying that because I’m part of it
Recent jury verdicts signal a turning point in addressing harms to children from social media platforms, but courts can’t fix systemic failures, argues Salil Tripathi. Real change requires regulating companies—setting standards, enforcing safeguards, and ensuring accountability.
Regulate Companies, Not Children
Jury verdicts signal accountability, but lasting change requires regulating platforms with enforceable safeguards and oversight, argues Salil Tripathi.
buff.ly
Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers
Why is it so complicated to fact-check claims about severe harms when people misunderstand how they're quantified? Thoughtful article by @nathalievanraemdonck.com, via the @aoir.bsky.social Mastodon server at @eilah_tan@aoir.social nathalievanraemdonck.com/2026/04/21/f...
Factchecking the online ‘rape academy’ discourse; on the tension between accuracy and activism
Over the weekend the story of an “online rape academy” went viral on social media, following an investigative reporting by CNN about an online network of men that exchanges tips to drug and rape th…
nathalievanraemdonck.com
Altijd interessant leesvoer.
Nathalie Van Raemdonck@nathalievanraemdonck.com · 4mo agoGetting back into blogging this year, I’m starting with the online discourse RE: the CNN “rape academy” story and the misnumbered “62 million men” participating. I reflect on a tension between accuracy and activism that deserves nuance nathalievanraemdonck.com/2026/04/21/f...
Getting back into blogging this year, I’m starting with the online discourse RE: the CNN “rape academy” story and the misnumbered “62 million men” participating. I reflect on a tension between accuracy and activism that deserves nuance nathalievanraemdonck.com/2026/04/21/f...
Factchecking the online ‘rape academy’ discourse; on the tension between accuracy and activism
Over the weekend the story of an “online rape academy” went viral on social media, following an investigative reporting by CNN about an online network of men that exchanges tips to drug and rape th…
nathalievanraemdonck.com
No the real purpose is to kill your privacy and track your every move Keeping children safe is just a favourite excuse cause who can possibly object to keeping children safe? It is such bullshit, and it does not even keep children safe, esp marginalized kids who need safe spaces
‘No more excuses’: Von der Leyen says EU age checking app is ready
Age verification app is central to EU effort to keep kids safe online.
politico.eu
Feel like a proud parent watching Joost Klein's full Coachella set 🥹 Been following Eenhoornjoost on Youtube since he got kicked out of his school Italiereis, and now the world is discovering this lil weirdo! I can imagine @maaikeverbruggen.bsky.social feels the same! youtu.be/NAbznZnrSCE?...
joost klein at coachella 2026 weekend 1
YouTube video by tobias De Greeuw
youtube.com
"social media isn’t a toxin that we can isolate and test and ban. It is an information-delivery system whose effect on any individual depends entirely on what’s in the drip" @dkthomp.bsky.social with critical nuances on social media bans for minors www.theargumentmag.com/p/against-th...
Against the Smartphone Theory of Everything
The phones are not the only problem
theargumentmag.com
