Please reach out/message me if you’d like to join!

Rua M. Williams@fractalecho.bsky.social · 2w ago

Interested in Critical HCI? @rone.bsky.social and I are launching Critical HCI Collabs discord. This server is designed to support collaborations between HCI researchers who are interested in critical approaches and methods, but who struggle to find the collaborators they need in their local areas.

Curiosity mixed with rage is really undersold as a motivator for sociotechnical research.

Everyone who says that you need to learn and use AI heavily right now to avoid being permanently left behind is telling you that they believe the future will feature profound and inescapable inequality and they’re okay with that.

Thank you so much for sharing our work! 🙌

Lilian Edwards@lilianedwards.bsky.social · last mo.

Important paper on whether LLMs gives accurate info when seeking abortion advice. Location dependent! And changed with rephrase of question! #FaccT2026

So happy for my home district 13!!

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · last mo.

NEWS: In a stunning upset, Mamdani-backed Darializa Avila Chevalier will defeat five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the NY-13 congressional primary. With victories by Lander, Valdez, and now Avila Chevalier, Mamdani went 3-for-3 with his endorsements in New York City's Democratic primaries.

Policymakers by and large don't read academic papers! If you're looking for policy impact, you need to show up. First you need to learn _how_ to show up. Excited to cohost this #FAccT2026 craft session with @rone.bsky.social, @narijohnson.bsky.social, Cynthia Bailey, and Danaé Metaxa.

Nari Johnson@narijohnson.bsky.social · last mo.

🔬Science can play a critical role in guiding policy interventions. How can we make our research legible to the policymakers who work on AI? Our tutorial "From FAccT to Policy Impact" explores how we can translate our research in a specific format: the policy brief! #FAccT2026

Yet another reason why a 97.8888% AI eval score is meaningless. Even just ONE error like this is insane.

Mike Tarpey@tarpey.io · 2mo ago

listening to the latest from @techwontsave.us and despite years of following the AI bubble at this point, this anecdote from a nurse about a major hallucination of their AI scribe completely stunned me. we have to resist and regulate, immediately. this cannot become the new norm.

At this point, I would rather see a flyer made with clip art and typed with Papyrus or Comic Sans than have to look at another AI-generated flyer.

The move from open regulatory processes that engage the public to clandestine, executive decisions about technology isn’t deregulation. It’s just a rose by another name. Folks, the brilliant @alondra.bsky.social

Alondra Nelson@alondra.bsky.social · 7mo ago

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here we go with dragnet practices again, courtesy of data broker loopholes (and data brokers in general).

Politico@politico.com · 5mo ago

Law enforcement needs a warrant to get your location data from cell phone providers. But the FBI has found an alternative avenue: Buying that information directly from data brokers.

Today in horrific news: House Republicans introduced the "Clean Water for All Life Act" requiring a health provider present for medication abortions. First, the bill opens with "chemical abortion" which is not even the correct term. So that should tell you a lot about this garbage bill. >> 🧵

Thanks for continuing to read, cite, and share this paper. It remains controversial in some corners of the discipline, but I stand by it completely. Many Black folks don’t use terms “liberal” and “conservative,” which makes the liberal-conservative scale a noisy tool for studying Black politics.

Daniel Laurison@daniellaurison.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Or for another example there's this great @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social paper on how Black "conservatives" mean something different when they tick "conservative" on surveys than what the people interpreting surveys think they should mean. academic.oup.com/poq/article-...

AI companies are paying screenwriters, lawyers, and other white-collar professionals to produce the training data needed to automate their jobs. I spoke with more than 30 workers about conditions inside this fast-growing and extremely secretive new gig economy.

The laid-off lawyers and PhDs training AI to steal their careers

Experienced white-collar workers are now part of a miserable gig economy.

theverge.com

It's been a journey of nearly 3 years, but I'm very excited to announce the CNTR AISLE Portal! 🚀 cntr-aisle.org It’s a new way to review and evaluate the 1,000+ AI bills introduced in the U.S. over the last three years. Check out the Bill Library and our Profiles#AIPolicy #OpenData

In Portland, the Water Bureau is piloting an algorithmic pricing system to automate bill discount levels. I've reported extensively on this otherwise ignored project. Lawmakers in CA have introduced several bills to regulate algo pricing, a very nuanced area. My reporting and more on CA follows:

Leaving Money on the Table: Inside Portland Water Bureau’s Algorithmic Pricing Program

Portland is testing a machine learning algorithm for water bill pricing that promises both affordability and higher revenues. Here’s the first in-depth analysis of the program and the tech be…

redtailmedia.org

With such low AI literacy rates (and low literacy rates in general -- another convo on critical thinking) and inequitable information access, can we move beyond putting the onus on consumers of these tools to be more responsible?

Electronic Frontier Foundation@eff.org · 7mo ago

“I would urge people not to think that the technology is the same as a well-resourced, thoughtful, research-driven medical professional,” EFF’s Cindy Cohn told @apnews.com. “People need to remember that these are just tools.”

Meanwhile, ChatGPT guided this teen on how to maximize his drug “trips” until he died from it. www.sfgate.com/tech/article...

A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT for drug advice. He died from an overdose.

"Who on earth gives that advice?"

sfgate.com

We're getting closer and closer to making tech dystopia novel, "The Marriage Act" by John Marrs, a reality: www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Heritage paper on families calls for ‘marriage bootcamp,’ more babies

The conservative think tank aims to boost U.S. marriage and births through discouraging online dating, restricting pornography and creating tax credits for families.

washingtonpost.com

this is irresponsible reporting. a neural network can't comment on why it produced CSAM. a neural network can't be held answerable for generating CSAM. accountability lies within the fascist ceo and the team willing to work for him www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

Grok says safeguard lapses led to images of 'minors in minimal clothing' on X

Elon Musk's xAI artificial intelligence chatbot Grok said on Friday lapses in safeguards had resulted in "images depicting minors in minimal clothing" on social media platform X and that improvements ...

reuters.com

Can public involvement in AI evaluation improve the science? Or does it compromise quality, speed, cost? In @pnas.org, Megan Price & I summarize challenges of AI evaluation, review strengths/weaknesses, & suggest how participatory methods can improve the science of AI www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How public involvement can improve the science of AI | PNAS

As AI systems from decision-making algorithms to generative AI are deployed more widely, computer scientists and social scientists alike are being ...

pnas.org

Another day when the assimilation of the internet into a tiny number of hands becomes obvious. AWS (Amazon web services) goes down and takes half the internet with it!

I'm convinced that many current "safety guardrails" in generative AI systems are merely financial and political risk mitigation strategies. They are meant to protect companies first, not users.

When it comes to AI, ignore what Sam Altman says and instead listen to @abeba.bsky.social @timnitgebru.bsky.social @olivia.science @irisvanrooij.bsky.social @karenhao.bsky.social

Oops, $1.5 billion to Prime subscribers! Another $1 billion to the FTC.

Ro Encarnación@rone.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Amazon has to pay $1.8 billion due to deceptive Prime subscription practices and change those same practices as part of an FTC settlement. It’s time to screenshot for posterity and wait for Amazon to use the settlement to raise Prime. Penalizing customers for what they did TO them.

Amazon has to pay $1.8 billion due to deceptive Prime subscription practices and change those same practices as part of an FTC settlement. It’s time to screenshot for posterity and wait for Amazon to use the settlement to raise Prime. Penalizing customers for what they did TO them.

Ro Encarnación@rone.bsky.social · last yr.

I know the FTC is already fighting this but I’m gathering more receipts for my own purposes. Amazon did try to subscribe me again after I cancelled. I then deleted all my payment options. So why did they try charging my card this morning?? Looks like they don’t delete your payment info either.

The dark patterns in abortion crisis pregnancy center websites are a special level of insidious and predatory. The "For Men" section in some of these websites goes to show how far they'll go. This screenshot is an example. The "Your" here is not referring to the pregnant person.

Heavily considering replacing bedtime stories with dramatic readings of research papers. Work smarter not harder yk?

is your workplace trying to force ai on you? is a family member giving ai too much power in their life? are you sick of billionaires destroying the environment and making life worse for everyone? here's a list of resources 10+ pages long to help you fight back: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Questioning AI Resource List

Excellent summary of major problems with companies’ focus on AI written by expert in machine learning: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ Another g...

docs.google.com

Google is also trying to lock in schools to a particular set of ideas that it claims to be based on "learning science" with its new LearnLM/Guided learning bot. It's a *theory lock-in* to a very attenuated version of learning theory. blog.google/outreach-ini...

Guided Learning in Gemini: From answers to understanding

Guided Learning is a new mode in Gemini that helps you learn and study by building a deep understanding instead of just getting answers.

blog.google

I want to see more of this! One person close to me who works as a SWE at a major company explained how bad it is right now. They are forced to have "AI goals", have full-day meetings teaching folks how to vibe code, and no one has tracked actual productivity.

Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · last yr.

despite popular beliefs, incorporating "AI" in workflows does NOT reduce time. "when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower" metr.org/blog/2025-07... the stark difference between forecasts and actual results in the plot is damming