iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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 · 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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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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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

I know you think I can see this post, but I can't.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Also possible the changes haven’t kicked in yet?

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

I thought the fact-checkers worked for third-party org and were not internal moderators. Find anything on Meta ending partnerships with third-party org?

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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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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I don’t know the culture at Open AI, but I see your point. But doesn’t that mean we need to be more careful about who we allow to develop powerful models? Are we not really in trouble if Open AI doesn’t care that much?

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Thanks! Two questions: (1) Does open source not entail the risk that people who don’t seriously care about safety will develop models too fast? (e.g. DeepSeek). (2) Can you not fight the concentration of private power through gov. regulation (public AI enterprises, antitrust, etc.)?

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

This is how I’ve always understood Aristotelians’ point about practical wisdom.

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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

"We don’t want the teenage kids to encounter bullying content only then to have to report it; we want them to be spared the burdens of encountering it in the first place."

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Contrary to most takes I've read, Jeff argues that increasing the confidence an AI classifier requires to flag speech as hate speech is a defensible option, but ceasing to use classifiers to detect hate speech (as Meta is doing) is not.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

I think that’s a flex. Dadcred.

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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

And just to try to keep BlueSky a positive space: I think that debates about decentralized moderation are fascinating, and I'm grateful for advocates of decentralization to have proposed a way to diminish the power of Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. I see this as public service.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

10/10 Let us say I try to make it so that you can't view hate speech on your FreeSpeechSky app; it's not obvious at all that I'm trying to regulate the public sphere. You might argue that I'm trying to unduly regulate something akin to your living room.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

9/ I’ll end here, but I recognize that things are more complicated. One further idea to consider is that decentralization – and social media generally – blurs the distinction between public and private speech.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

8/ And the Court ruled that Canadians would not want other Canadians to have access to violent pornography, partly on the grounds that it harmed women as a group (that's another debate, of course).

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

7/One example that comes to mind is R. v. Butler (1992), the Canadian Supreme Court case that led to a ban on certain kinds of violent pornography. The Court explicitly considered the question, “What do Canadians want other Canadians to be able to see in the public sphere?”.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

6/ The question – “What speech do you believe other people should see?” – has always been important in the legal regulation of speech.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

5/ In other words, my worry about hate speech is not that I will see it; it’s that the general circulation of hate speech in the public sphere has bad consequences. It’s demeaning. It’s psychologically harmful. It creates a social environment in which physical violence is more likely. Etc.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

4/ Now, people who believe hate speech should be regulated do not primarily believe that because they personally don’t want to see it. They also believe other people should not see it. E.g. I don’t want Muslims to be constantly bombarded with slurs.

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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

2/ Decentralized moderation, labels, and feeds allow users to customize the speech they will be exposed to online. For instance, I can choose not to see hate speech, but you can choose to see it.

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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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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

I was taught by an anti-Heideggerian who was once a very orthodox Heideggerian. What you say sounds right to me.

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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 · 12/01/2025

In Paris, I was taught that Davos is about whether the Kantian practical subject - who gives themself their own law - is compatible with human finitude. If so, how are they finite, precisely? In the First Critique, receptivity marks the knowing subject’s finitude. Is that it?

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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 · 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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Étienne Brown @etiennebrown.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

I love how you politely told me in person, "The coffee is a bit weak" and then you turn to social media to unleash all the hate. That's a missed opportunity to thrash talk bad coffee together, Robin.

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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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