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David Hobson

@dhobso.bsky.social
149 followers 169 following 33 posts

Research Engineer @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social | Computational Social Science, NLP, Computational Narrative Understanding He/him davidghobson1.github.io

PostsRepliesMedia
David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
CBC recently came out with an article uncovering a company, based in Vietnam, who's whole business model is to create AI slop on Facebook to generate revenue from ads. I wrote down some thoughts about what platforms should be doing differently here: davidghobson1.substack.com/p/the-buddin...
davidghobson1.substack.com
The growing tendrils of AI slop
How AI is making it more profitable than ever to create misinformation and how governments and platforms (well, Facebook) could be doing more to stop it
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Another reason why we need better regulation to make AI content more transparent www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
‘Very harmful’: website uses AI to generate northern Indigenous news ‘correspondents’ | CBC News
The website WE NEWS has three northern Indigenous 'AI correspondents.' Their profiles say they are 'a member of Yukon First Nation,' 'of Dene heritage,' and 'an Inuk raised in the North.' Experts in t...
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
La campagne électorale québécoise est officiellement lancée, et avec elle, notre première mise à jour hebdomadaire sur l'écosystème de l'information au Québec. 🧵
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Ben @bendavidsteel.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
first interesting finding from my autonomous ai agent! anyone know anything about europesays?
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Our latest incident report examines Canada's online reaction to the tragic June 2026 shooting in Cote-des-Neiges, Montreal, and the prevailing narratives that circulated during and following the crisis. 🧵
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
In 2025–26, we witnessed a growing tech governance gap: visible during the 45th federal election, in AI systems absorbing Canadian journalism without paying, and in an influence network spreading Alberta secession to a mass audience before platforms or regulators noticed. 🧵
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Great interview with my colleague @mathieulavigne.bsky.social on content farms using AI to target Canadians www.ctvnews.ca/video/2026/0...
ctvnews.ca
‘News slop’ accounts targeting Canadians on Facebook with misinformation | Deception Decoded
Mathieu Lavigne, the analytical lead at the Media Ecosystem Observatory, says the accounts use AI to write thousands of fake stories about trending topics.
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Ever been interested in coordinated activity on Facebook? My team and I tracked 340 foreign-run accounts that are using AI to create fake news content targeting users in Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe. Here's a little exploration of the data using Toponymy and DataMapPlot
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Our new incident response report exposes a coordinated network of 340 Facebook pages, largely operated from Vietnam, flooding feeds across Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe with AI-fabricated news, and inadvertently funded by Canadian public and private advertisers. 🧵
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
www.cbc.ca/radio/whaton...
cbc.ca
Loop's reusable packaging revolution failed in Canada. Here's why it's thriving in 500 French grocery stores | CBC Radio
Seven years ago, Tom Szaky got some of the world’s biggest corporations to invest in returnable containers, but the pilots shuttered everywhere but France. Could what he's learned there allow for a Ca...
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PWHL @thepwhl.com · 21/05/2026
They’re Walter Cup champions, Marcus.
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
With a potential Alberta referendum ahead, we're releasing "Slopaganda," an incident response report documenting a network of inauthentic YouTube channels pushing coordinated, fake Albertan political commentary. 🧵#cdnpoli
Figure 3. Most viewed inauthentic video thumbnails.
Top 16 most viewed video thumbnails from the inauthentic channels.
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Are you a Canadian aged 17 –23? Your voice matters in shaping AI & age assurance policy. Following our fourth #GenZAI Forum in Halifax, you can now share your perspective through Make.org's civic dialogue platform here: tinyurl.com/yyzny4mn
tinyurl.com
React and contribute to collective reflection: AI and Age Assurance
A journey to discover to share your point of view.
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Last night in NYC, @jonathanhaidt.bsky.social joined Ava Smithing for a live recording of Left To Their Own Devices, followed by a community showcase of organizations from across the US and Canada that Haidt called "the Woodstock of tech reform." 🧵
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Posts featuring terms like 'maxxing' and 'mogging' have increased substantially in 2026, suggesting growing adoption of language associated with harmful behaviour. But these terms aren't new — they originated in incel/manosphere online subcultures in the mid-2000s.
Source: Media Ecosystem Observatory data from posts shared by Canadian influencers, news outlets and politicians
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Are you a Gen Z Canadian (17–23)? We want to hear your thoughts on AI & data privacy! We just hosted our third #GenZAI forum, where 100 young Canadians drafted policy recommendations on AI data collection. Thanks to Make.Org, you can join the conversation here: tinyurl.com/yv6jz3rt
tinyurl.com
React and contribute to collective reflection: AI and Privacy
A journey to discover to share your point of view.
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Our newest brief, “Conspiratorial Claims and Institutional Distrust in Canada’s Online Ecosystem,” examines how anti-institutional conspiracy theories circulate online and how widely they resonate with Canadians.🧵 #cdnpoli
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Part experiment, part interesting
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Media Ecosystem Observatory @meo-cdmrn.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
🚨 MEO is moving 🚨 Follow @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social for updates on our information ecosystem research! 🧵
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Let me tell you who my BEST texting buddy has been lately. My 11-year-old niece, Morgan. Complete sentences ✅ Always asks how I am doing! ✅ Has interesting content to share✅ Knows when the chat as naturally concluded✅ Better than most adults and for sure all men.
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Ben @bendavidsteel.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Very happy to announce that our paper 'Just Another Hour on TikTok: ID sampling to obtain a complete slice of TikTok' was just published in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media! Check it out here: journalqd.org/article/view...
journalqd.org
Just Another Hour on TikTok: ID sampling to obtain a complete slice of TikTok | Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
#DigitalBlackoutIran
I stand with the people of Iran. A screenshot
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Anton Gerashchenko @antongerashchenko.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Protests in Iran continue.
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
"A risk is that, if Trump sticks to his course, he will push the world back to the way it was in the age of empires a century or more ago - a world where big powers, with spheres of influence, sought to impose their will, and where mighty authoritarian nationalists led their peoples to disaster."
bbc.com
Bowen: Trump risks pushing world back to age of empires
Donald Trump wants and needs quick victories. Taking Maduro is the decisive win he has craved, writes Jeremy Bowen.
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
The precedent this sets is terrifying www.cnn.com/2026/01/03/a...
cnn.com
Trump’s snatching of Maduro shows a new level of unrestrained global power | CNN
Expressions of unbridled power don’t come blunter than abducting a sitting president from his capital in the dead of night.
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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
Two weeks ago I spent the whole day at the Museum of the Moving Image to listen to New Yorkers. This is what Liam shared with me.
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Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy @mediatechdemocracy.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
This summer, David Suzuki received attention for his iPolitics interview titled: “‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost.” This shift in tone led us to ask: Are Canadians Climate Doomers? @chrispyross.bsky.social 🧵
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Media Ecosystem Observatory @meo-cdmrn.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
The #CharlieKirk shooting has sparked widespread debate about political violence. So, we surveyed Canadians to evaluate their perceptions of the event and political violence, comparing our results to U.S. data when available. Here's what we found 🧵 #cdnpoli #uspoli
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Media Ecosystem Observatory @meo-cdmrn.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Après une année marquée par l'ascension de l'IA générative et l'impact croissant des influenceurs sur les chambres d’écho, nos chercheurs sonnent l'alerte : sans règles claires ni transparence des plateformes, la manipulation pourrait bientôt dépasser notre capacité de détection. 🧵
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Studying how public figures are portrayed in the news is hard: pre-defined taxonomies are limiting, and character summaries don’t scale well. Our new paper introduces a taxonomy-free labeling approach using LLMs that can reveal nuanced character portrayals: aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
aclanthology.org
Evaluating Taxonomy Free Character Role Labeling (TF-CRL) in News Stories using Large Language Models
David G Hobson, Derek Ruths, Andrew Piper. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. 2025.
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Media Ecosystem Observatory @meo-cdmrn.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
🚨Our 2025 Federal Election report is here and it should serve as a warning for Canada to act now to protect future elections. Canada’s 2025 federal election upheld its integrity, but exposed a digital ecosystem under mounting strain. Read on to learn about our key findings 🧵
The Canadian Information Ecosystem during the 2025 Federal Election
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
“Generally, fascists and extremists are trying to undermine institutions of truth, facts and education because that is what’s standing in their way – an informed citizenry” - Sander van der Linden
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
If it doesn't fit your narrative or version of reality, get rid of it. bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Pentagon fires intelligence chief after Iran attack assessment
The firing comes just weeks after a White House rebuke of a leaked intelligence report assessing the impact of US strikes on Iran.
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
“All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room” (Blaise Pascal: Pensées)
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
“Gilgamesh, why are you roaming? Until the end comes, enjoy your life, spend it in happiness, not despair. Savor your food, make each day a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house… That is the best way for a man to live”
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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.
Carl Sagan
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Media Ecosystem Observatory @meo-cdmrn.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
WEEKLY UPDATE: WEEK 6 OF CANADA’S 45TH FEDERAL ELECTION🚨 We open this final weekly update with 6 key reflections from our research team on the 2025 Canadian federal election. These are preliminary impressions—our full post-election report will offer deeper insight. 🧵
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Media Ecosystem Observatory @meo-cdmrn.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
WEEKLY UPDATE: WEEK 4 OF CANADA’S 45TH FEDERAL ELECTION🚨 This week’s update looks at how social media is shaping our political perceptions during the 2025 federal election. Spoiler: what you see depends a lot on where you're scrolling. 🧵
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
This article raises a great point more broadly. Politics has become so much about persona and perception, as opposed to policy and ability www.ctvnews.ca/federal-elec...
ctvnews.ca
James Moore: Leaders’ debates have come to mean less and less
Do leaders’ debates matter? Will these coming debates matter? Yes, but no, writes James Moore.
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Media Ecosystem Observatory @meo-cdmrn.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
WEEKLY UPDATE: WEEK 3 OF CANADA’S 45TH FEDERAL ELECTION🚨 As Canada approaches its federal election, we're witnessing a surge in generative AI (GenAI) content that poses serious challenges to the integrity of our information ecosystem. 🧵⬇️ #GenAI #Deepfakes #CanadaElection2025
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
Apparently during the Great Male Renunciation in the 1700s, when the suit became the established male dress code, a British psychologist said men "abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful" and "henceforth aimed at being only useful". Yet another thing I'd want to change about Western culture
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
I’m increasingly feeling that insurance pressures and arguments are going to be the best way to push people towards climate action. For lack of any other strategy working, this may get through to people.
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
“The idea that well-placed CEOs can use their access to the powerful to acquire exemptions and special favors not available to ordinary Americans is the antithesis of an equitable economy.” www.cnn.com/2025/03/06/p...
cnn.com
Analysis: The world is beginning to tire of Trump’s whiplash leadership | CNN Politics
Government by chaos is back.
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Benno Krojer @bennokrojer.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
I keep thinking of this quote these days as things go crazy: "I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
It’ll always still be Denali for me.
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David Hobson @dhobso.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
From a while ago, but randomly found it today and thought it's still very relevant idrc-crdi.ca/en/stories/a...
idrc-crdi.ca
Artificial intelligence and human development
AI’s potential for enhancing development efforts is enormous, but we need to ensure its ethical and equitable use.
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