By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 02/09/2026Zuckerman studies platform power: "using data to answer hard questions about social media, search engines and AI tools." He leads a team that is documenting exactly, precisely how tech companies collude with authoritarians to spy on us, manipulate us, and control us. 58/ 1324 32
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 02/09/2026And his methodology is something called "unpermissioned research," which is what academics call scraping: www.techpolicy.press/ai-companies... 59/techpolicy.pressAI Companies Threaten Independent Social Media ResearchUMass Amherst researchers argue that researcher access to social media data should be one of the rare things all political factions in the US can agree on. 1252 25
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 02/09/2026"Unpermissioned research" seeks to circumvent limits that platforms establish *specifically* to stop outsiders from learning how they operate. 60/ 1250 25