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Étienne Brown

@etiennebrown.bsky.social
528 followers 293 following 66 posts

Philosophy prof. thinking about content moderation, recommender systems, and alternative social media. Co-organizer of PhilMod.org. French Canadian returned home ↔ Californian in exile.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
La vérification de l'âge en ligne est-elle incompatible avec la protection de la vie privée? Voici un texte dans lequel j'examine cette question, paru aujourd'hui dans Options Politiques. policyoptions.irpp.org/fr/2026/09/v...
policyoptions.irpp.org
Vérification de l’âge en ligne : protéger les enfants sans sacrifier la vie privée
La vérification de l’âge pourrait mieux protéger les enfants en ligne, mais les solutions doivent limiter les risques pour la vie privée.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
My department is hiring a tenure-track assistant professor in AI Ethics. Please share widely!! uottawa.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/uOttaw...
uottawa.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com
Assistant Professor - in Artificial Intelligence Ethics
Posting Reason: New Position Job Family: Academic Leadership and Faculty Union affiliation: APUO Faculty/Department: Department of Philosophy_Professors and Researchers Campus: Main Campus Date Posted...
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I spoke with Canada's National Observer about whether Canadian MPs should still be on X. We discussed the non-consensual deepfakes generated with Grok, the ethical case for elected officials leaving the platform, and whether we can imagine a radically different social media ecosystem.
nationalobserver.com
Is your MP still using X? After an investigation into non-consensual deepfakes, we analyzed the accounts
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada just released the results of its investigation into non-consensual sexualized “deepfake” images on X. For some MPs, this was the red line.
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Aidan McGlynn @aidanmcglynn.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
A tweet from 2022 by me: How many "great" works of philosophy would be accepted if I submitted them to a journal today? None. Not one. They'd says 'this has already been published', or 'oh god, not you again, please stop contacting us', or 'why is this in Latin?'. A sign of just how low we've fallen.
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CDTS | CLTS • uOttawa @cdtsuottawaclts.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
"Building Trust and Safety Across Sectors" 🗣 @etiennebrown.bsky.social 🎧 Trust in Tech (Olivia Conti) www.integrityinstitute.org/podcast/buil...
integrityinstitute.org
Building Trust and Safety Across Sectors — Integrity Institute
In this episode, host Olivia Conti discusses the Trust and Safety Foundation’s new edited volume by bringing in several of the book’s editors and contributors. The volume explores the evolution of tru...
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rob @ok-but-still.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
detective: you're a sick son of a bitch, you know it? that bird was your friend of 10, 12 years and you drop a big fuckin boulder on him. wile e. coyote: i swear to god man i didn't think it was gonna work. it never works. oh god. detective: nevada's a death penalty state.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Our next online PhilMod.org talk will be held this Thursday at 12:30 pm ET. I'm delighted that we'll be hosting Hannah McHugh from Utrecht University for a presentation titled "Empire for Rent: Kantian Republicanism and the Market for Digital Domination." Registration via our website.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
The first PhilMod talk for 2026 will focus on the epistemology of posting and reposting! Our guest will be Neri Marsili, Associate Professor in philosophy at the University of Turin. Link to register: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/philmod-ta...
eventbrite.co.uk
PhilMod Talk - Neri Marsili
Posting and Reposting - Investigating Reputation, Trust, and and Deniability in Online Communication
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D. Hicks @danhicks.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
Yesterday UCM Philosophy hosted @etiennebrown.bsky.social (San José State) for his talk "Recommended Selves: Authenticity and Algorithmic Filtering" #philsky #philsci www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDYz...
youtube.com
Étienne Brown: "Recommended Selves: Authenticity and Algorithmic Filtering"
YouTube video by UC Merced Philosophy
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Karl Schafer @karlschafer.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Time for an emergency session of Intro to Early Modern Philosophy?
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Nuanced, cool-headed take on recent content moderation changes at Meta by the inimitable Jeff Howard.
linkedin.com
Étienne Brown on LinkedIn: Content Moderation Makeover: Meta’s Changes Are a Mixed Bag
Nuanced, cool-headed take on recent content moderation changes at Meta by the inimitable Jeff Howard. Contrary to most takes I've read, Jeff argues that…
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Neil Levy @neillevy.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
I don't mind being rejected by a journal. What I resent is being rejected for good reasons.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Thanks again to @beaudoin.social for this essential thread. For me, the worry with decentralization is not that it will lead to echo chambers but that it will make it harder to curb the circulation of dangerous speech.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
There is so much opacity about moderation and algo. recommendation that it’s hard to overstate how important this is.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
There is an interesting tension in the philosophy of moderation between decentralization (i.e. customize your own personal public sphere) and democratization (same speech rules for everyone, but made democratically). This thread about decentralization is informative!
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Phil Beaudoin @handle.invalid · 13/01/2025
"Bluesky moderation lists create echo chambers." A short thread about decentralized moderation on Bluesky and why it changes everything.* 🧵 *Based on nearly a thousand hours spent exploring the platform's code.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
I’m still as amazed as I was six years ago (when I started) by my chair who collects scheduling preferences from all faculty members every semester before building the course schedule.
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404 Media @404media.co · 07/01/2025
Instagram begins randomly showing users AI-generated images of themselves 🔗 www.404media.co/instagram-be...
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
The best place to develop your toddler's fine motor skills is the taqueria.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Ma réflexion ce matin dans Le Devoir sur ce qui m'inquiète le plus dans les changements à la modération des contenus chez Meta.
ledevoir.com
Sur Facebook et Instagram, la haine coulera bientôt comme un long fleuve tranquille
Mark Zuckerberg octroie à ses usagers un permis de calomnier les plus vulnérables de nos sociétés.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
New G.A. Cohen book is out: “If you care about the environmental impact of AI, how come you fly to the APA twice per year.”
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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Academic letters of recommendation: a guide for the perplexed (Bluesky edition).
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Nvidie @dervine7.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
how did this one not get more attention youtu.be/XraQIvx5q0g?...
youtu.be
Robert Stalnaker - "I will adjust the context"
YouTube video by feallsanachd
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Unfortunately, Elise won’t be able to make it, but come hang out!
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Christian Nadeau @christiannadeau.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
23e titre de la collection PolitiqueS que je co-dirige avec ma collègue de Sciences Po/Paris, Julie Saada. À paraitre fin février. classiques-garnier.com/politiques.h...
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404 Media @404media.co · 19/12/2024
APpaREnTLy THiS iS hoW yoU JaIlBreAk AI Anthropic created an AI jailbreaking algorithm that keeps tweaking prompts until it gets a harmful response. 🔗 www.404media.co/apparently-t...
404media.co
APpaREnTLy THiS iS hoW yoU JaIlBreAk AI
Anthropic created an AI jailbreaking algorithm that keeps tweaking prompts until it gets a harmful response.
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Lydia Moland @lydiamoland.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Our Christmas Eve present from @oxunipress.bsky.social: proofs of our forthcoming Handbook! 50 newly commissioned chapters on #19thCentury #women in #philosophy from logicians to social theorists to utilitarians to pacifists. I guess I know what will be first on my to-do list in 2025! #philsky
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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
I hadn't used chatGPT for a while and was surprised to find that it now answers every question in the style of a middling and tedious student essay.
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Casey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Outstanding investigation from @lizpelly.bsky.social into how Spotify is relentlessly replacing artist-driven music on its most popular playlists with anonymous Muzak harpers.org/archive/2025...
For more than a year, I devoted myself to answering these questions. I spoke with former employees, reviewed internal Spotify records and company Slack messages, and interviewed and corresponded with numerous musicians. What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform. The program’s name: Perfect Fit Content (PFC). The PFC program raises troubling prospects for working musicians. Some face the possibility of losing out on crucial income by having their tracks passed over for playlist placement or replaced in favor of PFC; others, who record PFC music themselves, must often give up control of certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly lucrative. But it also raises worrying questions for all of us who listen to music. It puts forth an image of a future in which—as streaming services push music further into the background, and normalize anonymous, low-cost playlist filler—the relationship between listener and artist might be severed completely.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
The final paper from my late colleague Anand Vaidya has just been published. I miss him dearly. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Absence and the A Priori: A Note on Taber’s Argument - Journal of Indian Philosophy
Following J. N. Mohanty’s (1992) “Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian Philosophical Thinking”, John Taber offers an account of why the a priori is absent in Indian...
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Isn’t it disappointing that philosophers, who claim to think about life’s great questions, have written so little about parenting, which gives meaning to the lives of most humans?
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Is there any good way to avoid this? I frequently suspect AI plagiarism without being able to investigate. I'm very tempted to retreat to "all evals in the classroom," but that would also be bad for reasons pointed below.
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Kalvin the Reindeer @kalvinmacleod.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
I will jingle for half the way. Final offer.
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Richard Pettigrew @wiglet1981.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Job at Bristol that could be for a philosopher. From advert: We’d like to add to expertise in areas such as AI & ethics, phil of AI & philosophical foundations of ML, creative industries, creative tech, digital hums, game studies, screen studies, digital heritage & interactive storytelling.
bristol.ac.uk
Details | Working at Bristol | University of Bristol
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Samantha Brennan @samanthabrennan.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
It's official! The Public Philosophy Network is accepting proposals for its eighth conference, to be held October 17th-19th, 2025 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont, sponsored by The/La Collaborative. The theme is Public Philosophy and Social Change: Legacies, Grassroots, and New Directions.
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Velma R👀t @colorbombvelma.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Cheers!
Cartoon by Worry Lines

Top panel: A doughy figure stands before a vertical portal into the universe; caption reads Staring into the abyss

Bottom panel: Same doughy figure stands in front of the portal but this time the portal has brightly colored lights around its rim and the figure is holding a gingerbread cookie in one raised fist and a festive mug of something warm in the other; caption reads Staring into the abyss in December
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Annual reminder: Die Hard is about using impossibly limited resources to defend a tower from foreign invaders. Die Hard is a Hanukkah movie.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
I’d be excited to read some takes on the PGR that come from ESL speakers who work outside ranked programs. I’m wondering if most these takes will be negative.
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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 13/12/2024
People often ask me what I think about the philosophical gourmet report (the most well-known ranking of philosophy departments). So, I thought it might be worthwhile to put together some thoughts on it. tldr: They are on the whole negative, but I think some positives get overlooked.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
“Why does my toddler has such irrational fears?” I whisper to myself, wittingly ignoring the fact that I made my brother sleep in my room for a year so that he could protect me from cows.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
@caseynewton.bsky.social Why is everyone freaking out about paper clips when pro wrestling has taught us that thumbtacks are much more dangerous?
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Thank you and goodbye, Purdue Philosophy! We’ll keep sending you our best.
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
9 days left to submit to the Philosophy of Content Moderation conference (April 12-15, in Asilomar, California)! www.philmod.org/conference
philmod.org
Conference — PhilMod
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Who else is here because they're scared of LinkedIn?
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Hello, philosophy BSKY! I'm organizing a conference on the Philosophy of Content Moderation. Check it out: www.philmod.org/conference Abstracts due December 15
philmod.org
Conference — PhilMod
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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 30/09/2023
Step 1. Get on Bluesky. Step 2. Find enlightenment. Step. 3. Profit.
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