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Felix M. Simon

@felixsimon.bsky.social
7.8K followers 814 following 1.8K posts

Research Fellow in AI, Information & News, Reuters Institute, Oxford University | Research Associate, Oxford Internet Institute | Junior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College | AI, (mis)info, news, democracy | My views etc… www.felixsimon.net

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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
When I wrote about the limits of AI persuasion in the wild for @transformernews.ai recently, I didn't think of warning labels/or literacy treatments as a limiting factor – but seems like this cuts persuasive effects (see new WP by @dgrand.bsky.social and @rorchinik.bsky.social).
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Didn't expect a shoutout when I read this great FT Alphaville piece which takes a good look at open-weight models. In a nutshell, 1) locally run models see some real demand growth because they are a) good enough, b) cheaper, and c) don't come with IP security concerns (see OpenAI's mathematics news)
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Can’t help but wonder how the Navier-Stokes controversy will/won’t impact how researchers are using frontier firms’ models or science environments. buff.ly/GSOL3Ps
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
While I cannot be at @ecreaeu.bsky.social this year to co-present, please check out our AI work presented by great colleagues @richardfletcher.bsky.social, @amyrossarguedas.bsky.social and @waqasejaz.bsky.social.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Back from my summer break with a piece for @transformernews.ai on why the impact of persuasive AI's will be smaller in the real world than some think because (1) it is hard to reach people and get their attention… buff.ly/TvWgFSH
transformernews.ai
AI is a worryingly-good persuader. But don’t panic, yet
AI systems are able to persuade people, but turning that ability into meaningful real-world influence may be harder
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Transformer @transformernews.ai · 01/09/2026
Yes, AI systems are capable of persuading people –– but turning that ability into meaningful real-world influence may be more difficult Read more from Felix Simon, research fellow in AI & Information at @reutersinstitute.bsky.social ✍️ www.transformernews.ai/p/ai-is-a-wo...
The quote from Felix Simon reads: “The most apocalyptic of these scenarios imagine a new dawn of uber-persuasive machines against which we pitiful mortals stand no chance. But is it really game over? I don’t think so. Persuasion is possible, but I doubt that it will make as much of a difference as some claim. Persuasiveness is actually the “easy” part. What is difficult is getting hold of someone’s attention in the first place. Shifting a view once someone has one is harder still.”
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Back from my summer break with a piece for @transformernews.ai on why the impact of persuasive AI's will be smaller in the real world than some think because (1) it is hard to reach people and get their attention… buff.ly/TvWgFSH
transformernews.ai
AI is a worryingly-good persuader. But don’t panic, yet
AI systems are able to persuade people, but turning that ability into meaningful real-world influence may be harder
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Travelling with Deutsche Bahn is so bad these days that my 2h trip turned into a 12h Odyssey, with enough time for a local friend to spontaneously say Hello in Cologne (where I was stranded) because it was clear that nothing would move...
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College for Social Sciences and Humanities | UA Ruhr @college-uaruhr.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
The College looks forward to hosting communication researcher Dr @felixsimon.bsky.social from Oxford University (UK) as Invited Fellow in September. His research focuses on the societal impacts of AI, especially on the information ecosystem, the media, and democracy. Learn more: t1p.de/uj01i
Collage with a portrait photo of Felix M. Simon
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Gideon Moore @gideonmoore.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
1 in 5 US LinkedIn users edit job descriptions on well after leaving the position. In a new WP with @nickbloom.bsky.social, Lisa Simon, & Caelan Wilkie-Rogers, we argue this contaminates work using profiles as employment histories-but enables us to track skill demand over time. 🧵 (1/16)
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Gideon Moore @gideonmoore.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
How do we know that workers update their profiles to improve their job search? Because workers who change jobs time travel at nearly twice their base rate just before switching, then return toward base level. (8/16)
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Looks at all the academics who suddenly claimed they had always done AI 👀
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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
If we end up solving the Riemann Hypothesis by telling a computer "bro, believe in yourself" then I might have to go live in a hole www.anthropic.com/research/rie...
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Jack Tindale @jacktindale.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Properly gone at the idea of having this awarded like a corporate award gigs in one of those massive but soulless business hotel ballrooms, with Romesh Ranganathan hosting.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
The Reuters Institute recently published a great interview with the New York Times’ Malachy Browne on visual investigations – I think there were a couple of points on process as a new credibility signal worth paying attention to (see Substack & thread) open.substack.com/pub/felixsim...
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
This is good, actually. www.niemanlab.org/2026/08/a-re...
niemanlab.org
A record-breaking eight Pulitzer awardees disclosed AI use this year
Five winners and three finalists detailed their AI adoption to the judging committee.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I seem to be a sucker for having 🍅 🍅 🍅 thrown at me right before the weekend but here we are
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Slightly befuddled by Google doing this but equally irritated by claims that this is going to be a disaster, misinformation wise: x.com/Google/statu... Some thoughts below…
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
🚨New Science Advances🚨 Untrustworthy sources on Facebook and Instagram in 2020: Concentrated exposure but no attitudinal effects www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... -Exposure very low but highly concentrated -Reducing exposure by ~70% for months had no measurable effects *even among frequent consumers*
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
On the labour creation effects of a new technology, here Gutenberg’s printing press: “Finally, printing required more workers and more division of labor than scribing” (from Ann Blair’s magisterial “Information in Early Modern Europe).
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Drel:la, default effect @sektordrei.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
In den 1980ern hatte ich in Kunst "kritische Verfremdung"
Foto zeigt einen fiktionalen 20-Euro-Schein mit dem Motiv der WDR-Maus, die in einem Zuber Geldscheine wäscht und zum Trocknen aufhängt.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
One of the interesting epistemic side-effects of AI diffusion to me is the two-tier system that seems to have emerged around it in terms of information access/quality and people’s perception of what AI can(not) do as a result.
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Paper Skygest Team @paper-feed.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
**Please repost** If you're enjoying Paper Skygest -- our personalized feed of academic content on Bluesky -- we'd appreciate you reposting this! We’ve found that the most effective way for us to reach new users and communities is through users sharing it with their network
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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I have a new paper out in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social w/ the briliant @aybukeatalay.bsky.social and @aliaelkattan.com We show that what we pay attention to online is a lot more politically diverse than what public engagement signals would suggest... sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
sociologicalscience.com
Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement
Article: Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement | Sociological Science | Posted July 21, 2026
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Chris Stokel-Walker @stokel.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
So... what *did* actually happen with the OpenAI attack on Hugging Face? With the help of able experts, I've delved into the detail in a way I've not really seen other outlets do for @sciam.bsky.social - and ask what's next www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...
scientificamerican.com
What OpenAI’s rogue agent really did in the Hugging Face hack
The agent pursued its objective far beyond what researchers intended, revealing how difficult powerful AI systems can be to contain
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Last summer, I co-organised a small symposium on AI agents which in light of the OpenAI/Hugging face news feels prescient. Some quotes from the symposium report: "Several of those present argued that many of the most pressing risks are systemic."
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 21/07/2026
One obvious place to start fixing this: excise all references to "Kobayashi Maru" from the training corpus.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
In September I'll be spending three weeks at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Research Alliance Ruhr – the @college-uaruhr.bsky.social in Essen – as an Invited Fellow, by kind invitation of Julika Griem. Would be great to meet people in the area while I’m there.
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 20/07/2026
It won’t stop at math. Machines getting better at thinking through abstract problems than we are is going to be an emotional crisis for lots of people. I wish we were engaging that directly instead of having ridiculous shadow-debates about GPUs’ inherent thirst for water.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
For four years, AI has reigned supreme – and lots of news organisations have jumped on the bandwagon/caught on/thought deeply about how they, too, could make use of it. What do they (want to) use it for? Increasingly for content creation. Full post here: open.substack.com/pub/felixsim...
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
AI coverage 1, Climate coverage 0: In comparison to AI, climate change barely received any media coverage as of late. open.substack.com/pub/felixsim...
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
So what are the main DNR AI findings? 1) AI chatbot use for news up to 10% (from 7%), but only 1% cite it as main news source 2) Usage skews toward news-interested, AI-trusting, and younger audiences (16% of under-35s) South Korea, Spain doubled YoY; USA, UK, Germany flat
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
✨ 🤖 A brief summary of the AI findings of the Digital News Report 2026, a 48-country survey of news use and attitudes, now out by the @reutersinstitute.bsky.social.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Against my better judgment, I wrote something short on the claim that UK news isn't paying enough attention to the Claude Fable quagmire and AI more broadly.
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Peter Andringa @peter.andringa.me · 15/06/2026
Unfortunately, reporting does take longer than tweeting
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Peter Andringa @peter.andringa.me · 15/06/2026
Credit to my FT colleagues' follow-up, which published new details before the weekend was over (and includes five credits across four timezones!)
ft.com
Anthropic scrambles after Trump administration freezes its top AI models
Export controls on Fable and Mythos raise doubts over how US will police the most powerful AI systems
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Peter Andringa @peter.andringa.me · 15/06/2026
Felix makes good rebuttals to the "why does no one cover this??" tweets. But also: this news broke around 1am Saturday morning in London! It's hard for anyone to do much beyond writing up Anthropic's statement at that hour.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Against my better judgment, I wrote something short on the claim that UK news isn't paying enough attention to the Claude Fable quagmire and AI more broadly.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
✨ 🤖 New pre-print: Is realism dead and do people distrust everything, now that synthetic media is ubiquitous? It’s a bit more complicated.
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rasmuskleis.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Interview research from 🇲🇽🇺🇸🇬🇧finds concerns over AI-generated misinfo drive "indexical discounting" eroding realism heuristic, many want systemic remedies. @richardfletcher.bsky.social presents work led by @felixsimon.bsky.social @amyrossarguedas.bsky.social at #ICA26 Preprint osf.io/preprints/so...
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Ross Dahlke @rossdahlke.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
New work with @ryanmoore.bsky.social in @digitaljournalism.bsky.social examines Americans' exposure to Pink Slime websites--partisan websites that masquerade as local news--and compares consumption levels to untrustworthy and genuine local news websites doi.org/10.1080/2167...
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Not entirely sure I agree with everything argued in this short commentary pre-print on AI slop, but I do think the authors get one thing right: It’s too easy to dismiss AI slop.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Today in something that might not be entirely surprising but is still worth stating clearly: When we ask people to think about the what AI will do to news and their experience of it, their answers do not emerge from a vaccuum of perfectly rational and neutral observation.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
A thought sparked by Google’s IO: AI as it is deployed increasingly really tethers us more closely to information but mediated through the largest platforms (here Google) – it really is a centralisation of information that we are seeing.
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Dr Maha @maharafiatal.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Truly not a day has passed in a political science department in the UK for the last two years where we are not all turning to each other in the hallways and going "WTAF are they smoking." We are not a discipline with a lot of consensus research findings, but there is absolute consensus on this.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Today, another reminder why it matters to talk to people who are not coders, data scientists or the like on how they think about and use AI. I spent lunch talking to an Assyriologist who was genuinely open-minded about AI and uses it for teaching.
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
As Axios reports, OpenAI is following the Google approach in launching its own ad platform (which of course will allow standard-setting & more control, e.g. setting the rules for buying ads, gleaning insights about advertisers and targets). www.axios.com/2026/05/05/o...
buff.ly
OpenAI launches self-serve ad platform
The new platform makes it easier for a broader set of advertisers to buy ads on ChatGPT.
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Sam Gregory @samgregory.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Great conversation with @tainalon.bsky.social and @felixsimon.bsky.social at #ijf26 on "When seeing is no longer believing: perils and possibilities in a world of synthetic media" with our differing viewpoints on scope, societal implications, and what to do www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYwu...
youtube.com
When seeing is no longer believing: perils and possibilities in a world of synthetic media
YouTube video by International Journalism Festival
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Interesting work by the New York Times' Ted Alcorn, letting you dig into publication trends at the the NYT between 2000–26. Notable that the paper publishes significantly fewer words per month (and fewer articles) than 20 years ago. tedalcorn.github.io/nyt/
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