iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Our new paper introduces IO Factory: a simulation framework to study AI-enabled influence campaigns safely. It allows to model coordinated agent swarms, track how guidance becomes action & exposure, and audit against baselines. Methods follow-up to our AI swarms work. arxiv.org/abs/2608.10920

lnkd.in

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

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Lukasz Olejnik @lukaszolejnik.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

If all goes well, big news tomorrow. We're bringing a warning to societies. AI will have quite a broad effect, and it's important to understand this.

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

For my German-speaking friends: Quarks has a short explainer with Marc-Uwe Kling on AI, opinion formation, and how to reduce manipulation risks. www.youtube.com/watch?v=addZ...

youtube.com

So verhinderst du, dass KI deine Meinung steuert | Quarks mit Marc-Uwe Kling

YouTube video by Quarks Dimension Ralph

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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

This was a fruitful collaboration with Milan Obaidi, @antongollwitzer.bsky.social, @petterbb1969.bsky.social, @yhinrichs.bsky.social, Neha Saini, and @daniel-thilo.bsky.social. Thanks to UiO:Demokrati for funding our work and the AI:Democracy group.

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Rory White @rorywh.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

My latest story is out. Bots get banned on social media. The workaround? Real humans posting AI-generated messages in a gamified system, coordinated by an AI command centre. And it's being offered to your local town councillor. www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/24/i...

nationalobserver.com

Canadian politicians are being sold AI-powered civilian patrols

A new app gets around bot bans by recruiting real people to post political messages generated by AI.

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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

The distinction between grassroots activism and automated influence is collapsing. We typically worry about "bot farms" or "troll factories." But a distinct, more complex threat is emerging. We call it "Cyborg Propaganda."

The Matrix of Coordinated Influence. Traditional frameworks for analyzing online influence focus on the distinction between human and automated actors (Identity Axis) or between spontaneous and coordinated behavior (Articulation Axis). Bot Nets (top-left) rely on synthetic identities and automated scripts. Troll Farms (bottom-left) use human operators to manage fake personas. Grassroots Action (bottom-right) involves verified citizens sharing self-authored views. Cyborg Propaganda (top-right) represents a new paradigm: verified human users disseminating centrally generated, algorithmically generated narratives, effectively ‘hybridizing’ the authenticity of the grassroots with the scale of the botnet.

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Omid V. Ebrahimi @omidvebrahimi.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

📝 New preprint on the threat of cyborg propaganda to democracy. We discuss how the key divide in online influence is no longer bots vs humans. We are entering an era of 'cyborg propaganda': Verified human identities disseminate centrally generated, AI-crafted narratives 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Lukasz Olejnik @lukaszolejnik.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Pentagon used Anthropic's Claude in the operation to capture Maduro? The operation included bombing targets in Caracas. Anthropic: "we cannot comment on whether Claude was used for any specific operation." The "safe AI" company hit the battlefield faster than it could update its terms of service?

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Cyborg propaganda = Verified human accounts + AI-generated articulation + centralized coordination. Not botnets. Not traditional astroturfing. A hybrid model that exploits the human-in-the-loop loophole. We outline mechanisms, risks, and governance paths. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

doi.org

OSF

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Lukasz Olejnik @lukaszolejnik.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

My paper on the risks of influence operations, disinformation, and propaganda accepted for publication in the Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda, and Security Studies.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Democracy doesn’t require perfect truth—but it does require something more fragile: independent voices. The “wisdom of crowds” depends on independence between judgments. If a single actor can speak through thousands of inauthentic accounts, the apparent consensus of the crowd stops being informative

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Sander van der Linden @profsanderlinden.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

We have a new paper in Science today on how malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy. AI systems can already coordinate autonomously, infiltrate communities, and fabricate social consensus. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Led by @kunstjonas.bsky.social & @daniel-thilo.bsky.social!

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Michael Kreil @michaelkreil.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

After years monitoring Twitter/X, I’ve gathered ~150 TB of research data on public discourse (Covid-19, Ukraine, George Floyd, etc.). X’s legal limits prevent sharing it with the scientific community. If you know lawful ways or partnerships to help us to make it research accessible, please reach out

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

I read about those a while ago, but I think it might make sense to invest some time again. Neural cellular automata are societies of tiny agents that preserve and repair global structure by propagating information locally. arxiv.org/abs/2509.11131

arxiv.org

Neural cellular automata: applications to biology and beyond classical AI

Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) represent a powerful framework for modeling biological self-organization, extending classical rule-based systems with trainable, differentiable (or evolvable) update rul...

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

We examined the role of social media in the amplification of violent, divisive discourse during Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1... And I proudly did not use any LLMs for this post.

tandfonline.com

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Gordon Hodson @gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

This book looks great! Can't wait to read. (and thrilled to be a part of it. @nourkteily.bsky.social & I have a chapter on dehumanization you might be interested in!) #PrejudiceResearch #PsychSciSky Congrats to the Editors on curating such a strong list of chapters.

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Fil Menczer @fil.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

New preprint: How Malicious AI Swarms Can Threaten Democracy 🧪 osf.io/preprints/os...

osf.io

OSF

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David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

🚨In PNAS🚨 The right often accuses fact-checkers of political bias But we analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and found posts flagged as "misleading" are 2.3x more likely to be written by Reps than Dems! The issue is Reps sharing misinformation, not fact-checker bias... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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David Colon @davidcolon.eurosky.social · 03/06/2025

ALERTE : 19 chercheurs de très haut niveau alertent sur la menace que représentent pour les démocraties les essaims d’IA malveillantes (« Ai Swarms »), qui peuvent se coordonner, échapper à toute détection, créer des informations convaincantes, et manipuler les élections. 1/3

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Stefan Brenner @stefanbrenner.net · 03/06/2025

Pre-print by @daniel-thilo.bsky.social et al. argues that the truth can be bent more quickly than it was in the past. I rarely go that far out on a limb, but in this case it is no longer a question of whether these scenarios will materialise. This is the world we live in and we need to prepare now.👇

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

The combination of #artificialintelligence and #socialmedia poses a threat to democracy. Our new paper explains how AI swarms can fabricate grassroots consensus, fragment shared reality, engage in mass harassment, interfer with elections, and erode institutional trust: osf.io/preprints/os...

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

I was looking forward to this Dagstuhl Seminar for quite some time. There is something to sitting somewhere in the middle of nowhere for a week and having discussions with a pile of very smart people.

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Hacker Briefs @hackerbriefs.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

"OpenAI's o1 Playing Codenames" AI is showing some skills in games like Codenames, but it struggles to really understand teamwork and strategy, which makes it less impressive. Article | Discussion

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

This multi-year, multi-country analysis shows that right-wing populist politicians spread more online misinfo than their mainstream counterparts and explains how “the rise of political misinformation is associated to the recent wave of radical-right populism.” journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Screenshot of a paper in the International Journal of Press/Politics. Title: When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries. Authors: Petter Törnberg and Juliana Chueri. Abstract: The spread of misinformation has emerged as a global concern. Academic attention has recently shifted to emphasize the role of political elites as drivers of misinformation. Yet, little is known of the relationship between party politics and the spread of misinformation—in part due to a dearth of cross-national empirical data needed for comparative study. This article examines which parties are more likely to spread misinformation, by drawing on a comprehensive database of 32M tweets from parliamentarians in 26 countries, spanning 6years and several election periods. The dataset is combined with external databases such as Parlgov and V-Dem, linking the spread of misinformation to detailed information about political parties and cabinets, thus enabling a comparative politics approach to misinformation. Using multilevel analysis with random country intercepts, we find that radical-right populism is the strongest determinant for the propensity to spread misinformation. Populism, left- wing populism, and right-wing politics are not linked to the spread of misinformation. These results suggest that political misinformation should be understood as part and parcel of the current wave of radical right populism, and its opposition to liberal democratic institution.

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Something I add to my when-I-am-retired-and-live-in-a-summer-house-in-italy-reading-list reading list. ~250 pages about LLMs FOR FREE! arxiv.org/pdf/2501.09223

arxiv.org

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Miro Dittrich @mirod.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Unsere Webseite zur Bundestagswahl ist online! Hier findet ihr unsere Telegram-Datenbank-Dashboards sowie laufende Analysen zu Desinformationskampagnen und rechtsextremen Einflussnahmen.

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Sam Harris writes in his latest blog post. "... I abandoned Twitter/X altogether, having recognized the poisonous effect that it had on my life—but also, in large part, because of what I saw it doing to Elon." In the end, sm might be a net negative. samharris.substack.com/p/the-troubl...

samharris.substack.com

The Trouble with Elon

I didn’t set out to become an enemy of the world’s richest man, but I seem to have managed it all the same.

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

This is interesting but also somewhat scary. It seems like transformers learn during inference. arxiv.org/abs/2501.06252 www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx0w...

youtube.com

SakanaAI Unveils "Transformer Squared" - Test Time LEARNING

YouTube video by Matthew Berman

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

There is this now. Information and Misinformation in Elections: 2025 Conference www.protectingtheelection.us/conference

protectingtheelection.us

Conference — Caltech 2024 Election Integrity Project

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Manoel Horta Ribeiro @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

New @acm-cscw.bsky.social paper, new content moderation paradigm. Post Guidance lets moderators prevent rule-breaking by triggering interventions as users write posts! We implemented PG on Reddit and tested it in a massive field experiment (n=97k). It became a feature! arxiv.org/abs/2411.16814

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Hacker Briefs @hackerbriefs.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

"The Illustrated Guide to a PhD" A PhD is a tough journey with ups and downs. Many feel the system is broken, but finding a loving problem makes it worth it. Keep pushing forward! Article | Discussion

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

I couldn't sleep, so I found myself reading a @bernardokastrup.bsky.social blog post responding to @joscha.bsky.social critique of the "cosmic nervous system." A wild scientific ride, and a surprisingly good bedtime read. I hope they've reconciled. www.bernardokastrup.com/2016/01/the-...

bernardokastrup.com

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

This exciting paper presents an LLM-enabled framework for simulating human behavior, surpassing SIMS-like environments. Imho, it's the first real chance to study malicious AI bots in social networks. openreview.net/pdf?id=gS0hp...

openreview.net

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Happy to be part of the #AquaINFRA @NLS_FGI in Helsinki to learn about digital twins of the ocean! Productive discussions and collaboration with this great group. #HorizonEU #OpenScience #ResearchData #EOSC #FAIRData #DataIntegration #SocioeconomicData

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Daniel Thilo Schroeder @daniel-thilo.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

An article we worked on a long time ago was finally published. We study simulations, social networks, and misinformation, focusing on how digital platforms shape societal dynamics and spread disinformation in Mali. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

journals.sagepub.com

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