iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Glad to be able to sign this. In light of the other letter going around, I think it’s genuinely important to show that a lot of us support a version of academic freedom that doesn’t include the freedom to create an environment that’s unlivable for scholars and students.

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Laura Chapin @laurachapin.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

"For the next two minutes, Cloud detailed three issues impacting women that she believes deserve more attention than Freedom: domestic violence, sexual assault and food insecurity." www.nytimes.com/athletic/754...

nytimes.com

Natasha Cloud calls Enes Kanter Freedom ‘irrelevant,’ urges WNBA to ban him league-wide (Gift Article)

“I will talk about real issues that face women, and it’s not our trans human beings,” Cloud said.

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Bouie is an analyst I deeply respect; but there is an extent to which he has found himself working at clown inc, spending his days surrounded by coworkers who’ve never needed LLMs for help hallucinating, and the end result just feels modestly embarrassing on all levels…

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Does anyone know of any good resources/lists for finding political influencers, journalists, politicians, etc on more niche social media platforms? (Here, we have starter packs for example). Particularly interested in hyperpartisan right wing social media (Truth Social/Gab/etc).

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Very pleased to share a new publication from @magdalenawojciesza.bsky.social and myself. Here, we present both a sweeping systematic review of the causes of news non-use/news avoidance, and a prescriptive framework outlining how we can begin testing and implementing solutions!

academic.oup.com

Correlates of and counterstrategies to news non-use: systematic review and prescriptive framework

Abstract. News and politics constitute a small fraction of people’s information diets, and many individuals avoid news and public affairs information, a ph

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Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 08/06/2026

Consume! You Trans Suffering! Go fund trans artists

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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 09/06/2026

Truly niche framing for a story about how growing number of colleges, under sustained pressure from Republicans and conservative donors and trustees, have decided their queer students simply do not matter.

insidehighered.com

Colleges Backtrack on Pride Month

While many colleges are still celebrating Pride Month, a small number have deleted related social media posts, dropped out of local events and stopped flying the rainbow flag.

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Signal @signal.org · 08/06/2026

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

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

This panel was very thought provoking. Very glad to have attended!

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Excited to present our research assessing the extent to which informational ads can boost trust in US election processes today at 3! If you're one of the 7 attendees hanging around who isn't presenting, find us at room 2.61 in CTICC1!

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Brian Stelter @brianstelter.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

"The bigger problem, Lulu, frankly, is not any kind of political influence. The problem was the incompetence.." Scott Pelley talked to @lulugn.bsky.social about "the Bari Weiss era and his last days at 60 Minutes:" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/m...

nytimes.com

Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at ‘60 Minutes’

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

The inimitable @magdalenawojciesza.bsky.social just presented our work developing a large scale machine classifier to assess news article quality. Existing options are anglocentric, work at an outlet level, apply only to news orgs and operationalize quality purely through bias and accuracy.

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Jacob Epstein @yaakovepst.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I’m thinking about using knowledge graphs to study reactionary/anti-gender politics as evolving relational ecosystems: actors, orgs, events, cultural artifacts, platforms, tactics, narratives, and time. Are there academics working near this who are open to mentoring/supervising this project?

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Really lovely to see cool research (parents of) on gender diverse kids and media consumption coming from my Alma Mater. There really is so very little mainstream media that depicts us anywhere near tolerably. Lovely presentation by AnneMarie K. McClain of BU, really excited for the full paper!

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Anyone else find programming surveys in Qualtrics oddly soothing, or is that just me?

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Struggling to look at this and see any other reading than that it is a state-sponsored conversion therapy center. Obviously, this is to some extent posturing. It remains to be seen how this will look in practice, or whether it will actually see patients.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

I appreciate @natecohn.bsky.social & Eve Washington's NYT piece pointing out that random simulations of nonpartisan districting tend to produce many minority opportunity districts, perhaps as many as we have now. But although the subhead comes close, the authors do not ever quite say the key point—

highlighted text (subhead): Our simulations debunk the notion that the act created artificial minority districts that wouldn't otherwise exist.

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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

This relationship map of the penguins at the Kyoto Aquarium is wild. It shows love triangles, friendships, enemies, and much more. Each penguin wears an armband that allows visitors to identify each penguin. Best soap opera in the country!!! Source: buff.ly/2bp5VFc

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Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Gender is innate and immutable but also so fragile that it can be destroyed by drinking out of a straw 🤔

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Somehow Beniger's paper on pseudo-community and the kind of "authenticity" wars we might face going forward feels ever more prescient.

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April Glick Pulito @aprilglick.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I feel I should alert Bluesky to the baby foxes in our yard

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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 23/04/2026

Let’s just say there is a lot of Gender happening underneath the decision of who gets a presumption of reasonableness and who doesn’t.

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zeynep tufekci @zey.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I was impersonated by Grammarly as well. Besides the lack of consent, a big problem is that the LLMs do a highly plausible impersonation of my views for anything not specific to me but miss exactly where my views differ from many AI experts or critics. So worse than useless. Actively misleading.

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

The article makes this fairly explicit, but it's worth emphasizing that Grammarly doesn't have any clear option to request a specific reviewer (hence you can't easily check if you're included) and even a cursory attempt gets it to produce a bunch of random scholars from my or adjacent fields.

Image from Grammarly showing that it generates AI feedback which presents itself as if written by Tarleton Gillespie, Zeynep Tufekci, Cass Sunstein, Shanto Iyengar and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen.

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

It strikes me that even the writing-adjacent areas where LLMs are likely to be useful, a lot of these benefits are still essentially unproven, and I am honestly dubious that the automation will routinely speed or enhance output when factoring in essential human scrutiny and review.

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

The big thing that interests me in Lakshya's data is that the answers re: which side is better on LGBT rights seem to diverge much more sharply from others. The individual rights questions aren't that dissimilar to Pew, etc. But I'm very curious how/why Lakshya gets this result:

Poll question asking "Which side holds the edge in public opinion on LGBT issues?" with 39% saying republicans, and 38% saying Democrats.

Source: https://substack.com/home/post/p-188193326

Poll from Fox News asking: "Which Political Party would better handle key issues?" showing trans people are +20 points over Republicans.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-early-look-2026-midterms

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NPR @npr.org · 05/11/2025

Democrats had a good night, winning major races including governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey and a redistricting ballot measure in California, while also confronting the future of the party. n.pr/3JKZzJO

n.pr

From Abigail to Zohran, here's what you need to know about the 2025 elections

Democrats had a good night, winning major races including governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey and a redistricting ballot measure in California, while also confronting the future of the party.

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Maxime Scholte Albers @maximescholte.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

And #ica25 presentation done! Open call: we’re still looking to do more interviews with D&D players who are considered ethnic minorities. Interested? Please reach out!

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shaunt @shaunvids.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

if i thought this site was going to moderate properly i'd subscribe to it happily & talk about the benefits of doing so to my million+ followers across youtube, twitter & twitch. as things are i'll be saying it isn't worth it. hearing similar things from my pals with big online followings

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Caroline Litman @alicemydaughter.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

BREAKING On the day the UK government announces a permanent puberty blocker ban I learn: ALICE’S DATA WAS NOT INCLUDED in data sent to Appleby to assess for his rushed DHSC report, that dismissed whistleblower claims of increased suicides in trans youth since Bell. The report is a proven sham.

Copy of Caroline’s email sent to the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust, asking if Alice Litman‘s data was sent to the DHSC for Prof Appleby to review.

Reply from head of data at the Tavistock Portman NHS foundation trust, saying Alice‘s data was not included in the audit.

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AliceK @coalisdead.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

How the Social Media Ban Harms Children *Social media is a life line for socially excluded children

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

The discourse around Jesse Singal is interesting. To many unfamiliar, I suspect it looks like well-intentioned, but censorious prone, activists trying to shut down liberal skeptics. The objection is much more the well-documented accusations of serial harassment of trans women who challenge him.

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Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Quite the headline: 295,000 journalists in 44 countries will drop X EJC: we can “no longer ethically participate in a network that its owner has transformed into a machine of disinformation and propaganda” www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/media/e...

thelondoneconomic.com

European Federation of Journalists to stop posting content on X

The EFJ represents over 295,000 journalists in 44 countries.

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

As Bluesky takes off, it’s important to remember how much of the culture was shaped by the early trans/queer cluster. I do worry that could get buried in the cultural narratives around the current phase of growth and the platform’s better utility for journalism. www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

rollingstone.com

'It's a Huge Relief': Trans 'Shitposters' on Bluesky Feel Safer Away From Twitter

Trans and queer shitposters say it's a "relief" to be on Bluesky, describing it as a far safer and more joyous alternative to Twitter under Elon Musk

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Erin Wertz @erin-wertz.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Hi! I don't have anything to post at the moment, but I look slightly less like I'm pretending ot be a human being if I have something here, so here we go.

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