iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Mark McKenna @markpmckenna.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Very happy to report that @jessicasilbey.bsky.social and I have signed a contract with MIT Press to publish The Law of Everyday Design, our book based on a qualitative interview study of designers. Forthcoming 2027.

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Rachit Dubey @rachitdubey.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning.. We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance. And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use! 1/

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Jessica Silbey @jessicasilbey.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma... A gorgeous essay about what we lose when we outsource thinking. "The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing."

ergosphere.blog

The machines are fine. I'm worried about us.

On AI agents, grunt work, and the part of science that isn't replaceable.

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Carys Craig @caryscraig.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

My PhD supervisee, Xiang Zhang, did a lovely job writing up this year’s thought-provoking Grafstein Lecture by Jessica Silbey @jessicasilbey.bsky.social: “Copyright’s Edges and the Ethics of Expression in the Digital Age”. Read about it on the #IPOsgoode #IPilogue: www.yorku.ca/osgoode/ipos...

yorku.ca

Silbey’s central thesis is that contemporary copyright law is undergoing a gradual but profound transformation. Doctrines historically designed to facilitate the circulation of ideas and preserve the ...

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Scaling Laws @scalinglaws.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Are AI systems "a death sentence for civic institutions"? @alanrozenshtein.com talks with @hartzog.bsky.social and @jessicasilbey.bsky.social, who argue that AI's core design features threaten the rule of law, higher education, journalism, and democracy. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

podcasts.apple.com

Is AI a Death Sentence for Civic Institutions?, with Jessica Silbey and Woodrow Hartzog

Podcast Episode · Scaling Laws · March 17 · 53m

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James Grimmelmann @jtlg.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

@hoffprof.bsky.social reports that "many faculty I’ve chatted with this year used AI to generate their abstracts" and all I can say is what is wrong with you people? 1/4 profhoffman.substack.com/p/contractin...

profhoffman.substack.com

Contracting Around Generative Legal Writing

In a recent post, I looked at how AI vendors use contracts to disclaim responsibility for their products.

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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right. Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement. This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

The political effects of X's feed algorithm
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2
Received: 16 December 2024
Accepted: 4 January 2026
Published online: 18 February 2026
Open access
• Check for updates
Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m
Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects.
Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

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Bruce Springsteen @brucespringsteen.net · 28/01/2026

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

youtu.be

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Walz: Minnesotans are witnessing, and we're creating a log of evidence for the future prosecution of ice agents and officials responsible for this.

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Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Extending 42 USC 1983 to federal officers has become a moral necessity.

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Jordi Goodman @jordigoodman.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

I cannot thank our contributors enough: @marklemley.bsky.social, @patentscholar.bsky.social, @denverfrakes.bsky.social, Melissa Wasserman, @emptydoors.bsky.social, Janet Freilich, @jessicasilbey.bsky.social, @davidlschwartz.bsky.social, and Neel Sukhatme. Looking forward to more years of research!

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Jessica Silbey @jessicasilbey.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Mayor Michelle Wu speaking truth to power. A fabulous example.

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Boston University School of Law @bulaw.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

#BULawProf @jessicasilbey.bsky.social, @robertltsai.bsky.social, and @jedshug.bsky.social discuss SCOTUS' ruling limiting nationwide injunctions and its deferred decision on the constitutionality of the effort to end birthright citizenship. Read more ➡️ www.bu.edu/articles/202...

bu.edu

BU Legal Scholars Assess Supreme Court Ruling Limiting Nationwide Injunctions

Justices defer decision on the constitutionality of effort to end birthright citizenship

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Boston University School of Law @bulaw.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

"What I see in this decision is the court’s attempt to buy time, through procedural mechanisms, to avoid deciding a question that it would rather see decided by the political process," says @jessicasilbey.bsky.social.

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Boston University School of Law @bulaw.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

A sweet moment gone viral or an invasion of privacy #BULawProf @jessicasilbey.bsky.social & @hartzog.bsky.social join @comatbu.bsky.social Prof. Kathryn Coduto to discuss a public marriage proposal shared online and the privacy questions it raises in the social media age. www.bu.edu/articles/202...

bu.edu

A Viral Marriage Proposal Raises Privacy Questions in the Social Media Age

BU professors from COM and LAW on the debate sparked by a bystander-captured video of a private moment along the Charles River

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Sam Bagenstos @sbagen.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

As someone who has been on the business end of nationwide injunctions that I thought were improper, I find the question of what rules we should adopt for them to be genuinely hard. But yesterday's decision deserves massive criticism, for at least two reasons. (Thread.)

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Mark McKenna @markpmckenna.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

@jessicasilbey.bsky.social and I have a new paper that draws on our empirical research into designers and focuses on how designers conceive of and solve design problems. Feedback welcome.

papers.ssrn.com

Design Problems

This Essay draws on our empirical research into designers and their work to investigate the limits of intellectual property law for achieving its goal of progre

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Jessica Silbey @jessicasilbey.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I'm wondering if pilots and flight attendants are considering a national day(s) of walk out in protest of the FAA layoffs?

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Jessica Silbey @jessicasilbey.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25... AUSA resignation letter.

s3.documentcloud.org

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Jessica Silbey @jessicasilbey.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/09/o...

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m. r. sauter @oddletters.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

update: here is the AI policy i wrote for my doc seminar this term (i have already located the typo and fixed it, which tbh is like 60% of the point of posting it in public)

I have adopted the following policy on the use of generative Al systems, which is adapted from one originally written by Prof. Susannah Paletz.

There are two primary goals of this doctoral seminar. The first is to familiarize you with Science and Technology Studies as a literature, through its intellectual history and breadth of critical considerations. The second goal is to train you in the scholarly practices of reading large amounts of textual material quickly and effectively, synthesizing and discussing that material accurately and in detail, and then using the insights, methods, theories, and approaches of those texts in your own intellectual work. My expectation is that you will not use any generative artificial intelligence systems (like ChatGPT, Claude, etc) to complete your work in this class. Any use of Al-generated work to brainstorm, outline, write, edit, etc, your work will be considered an academic integrity violation. These systems are often inaccurate, are bad at summarizing complex materials, and relying on them will make your work worse and less interesting. The use of these programs does not serve your development as a thinker, writer, and scholar.

To quote Professor Andrew Perfors, "As a teacher, what I want to teach, and what I want people to practice doing, is the process of creation itself. I don't give a single goddamn flying fuck what ChatGPT thinks about the essay prompt. The purpose of having students write an essay is not to fill the world with yet more words on the topic of the essay: the point is to find out what my students think about the topic. Actually, the point is even deeper - it is to make them go through the process of figuring out for themselves what they think, and to wrestle with putting those thoughts into words so that they can clarify things to themselves and improve their ability to share those thoughts clearly. This process cannot be short-circuited by outsourcing it to Al; to do so removes the entire fucking point."
…

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Victor Pickard @victorpickard.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

It's becoming increasingly difficult to deny that significant sectors of our media system are little more than tools for oligarchs.

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Solomon @solomonrmissouri.com · 04/01/2025

The New York Times reporting on the Washington Post is… 🤨

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Josh Kaplan @josh-kaplan.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

The infiltrator’s name is John Williams. To learn what he revealed about the paramilitary movement — and how a mole managed to become a senior leader in a major American militia — read the full story here: www.propublica.org/article/ap3-...

propublica.org

A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias. This Is What He Found.

Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends....

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

Luigi Mangione fan art, merch, and photos are getting hit with bogus copyright takedown requests all over the internet. Artists and journalists affected. Very difficult to tell who is doing it, but one company says they received a request from United Healthcare: www.404media.co/copyright-ab...

404media.co

Artists, merch sellers, and journalists making and posting Luigi media have become the targets of bogus DMCA claims.

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Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

The United States is now producing enough domestic solar to cover nearly all annual deployment. That's what policy can do, folks! And a majority of these jobs are in Republican districts.

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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

The Senate confirmed 2 district judges this afternoon: Mustafa Taher Kasubhai (who'll be a judge on the District of Oregon) Sarah French Russell (who'll be a judge on the District of Connecticut)

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