Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherMarco @mcognetta.bsky.social · 6h🚨 [Token][ization] Paper Alert 🚨 Tokenization is a wildly understudied area of language modeling despite it having effects across all of NLP. Over the past ~8 months, 32 (!) tokenizer researchers put together the most comprehensive survey of the field. Check it out! 19428
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherAlexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 9hToday on @indicator.media: Google is breaking its promise to label ads for unofficial government services providers. Travelers are paying the price.indicator.mediaGoogle promised to label ads for unofficial visa providers. It’s doing a lousy job of it.An Indicator audit found labels on only 8% of ads for visa providers that overcharge their users 165
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherMaria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I'm recruiting 1-2 PhD students to join our lab in Fall 2027, through either Computer Science or Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder! Looking for people with interests in NLP plus [healthcare | literary studies | narratives | social media | etc.]. Join us! 🏔️☀️cls-lab.comCLS Lab — Culture, Language, & Systems | University of Colorado BoulderThe Culture, Language, & Systems Lab at CU Boulder studies the language systems that transmit and shape modern culture, from internet platforms to literary archives to language models. 06950
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherAT Protocol Developers @atproto.com · 28/09/2026The organization that governs the PLC Directory now formally exists as a registered Swiss Association and has taken the first steps towards being able to independently operate the directory. blog.plcred.org/3mwlphq42d227blog.plcred.orgFirst steps of the PLC organization 213432
Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 26/09/2026I would be insufferable if I ever taught Python again 030
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherTomás G. @tomasgna.bsky.social · 24/09/2026i have a new paper out in Social Media+Society about Trust & Safety specialists! 📝 i argue that they construct online harms by presenting themselves as advocates for users, creating risks, and publicizing this work. my goal was to make sense of the inherent instability of T&S work... 162
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherRude1 Haunted Badness. ⁂ @rude1.blacksky.team · 23/09/2026tawk. 🗣️ 24463128
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherJoe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”. 14504169
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherJoe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026For whatever reason the fact that LLMs manifest their task completion with language has had folks wanting to jump the gun on a big thorny question of whether/when they “think” in the sense that we all have come to understand it. They may simply not need “think” to to complete complex tasks. 723231
Reposted by Ryan J. Gallagherewan @ewancroft.uk · 19/09/2026AI is a tool. Not a replacement.blog.ewancroft.ukI Still Built Itif an LLM wrote a significant amount of the implementation, apparently the human directing it no longer counts. 3365
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherAlvin Zhou @alvinyxz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026🎉 New editorial: "Be Careful What You Prompt For: Generative AI in Computational Communication Research." It opens our special issue of 12 open-access papers, co-edited with @wrahool.bsky.social and @ewam.bsky.social 🧵 doi.org/10.5117/CCR2...doi.orgBe Careful What You Prompt For: Generative AI in Computational Communication Research | Amsterdam University Press Journals OnlineAbstract Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has field-level implications for computational communication research (CCR), not only by expanding methodological repertoires, but also by reshaping... 199
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherCarl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19/09/2026When we talk about the costs that LLMs impose on society we should not forget the fact that nothing works anymore because everyone is so scared of getting their shit scraped. I can't even use google scholar from my university or starlink because they send too much traffic. 984454963
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherChris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026the experience of COVID really drove this home for me. It wans't the apocalypse, life went on, but a million people died and there were enormous social costs, some of which continue to this day and then when it was done most people were like "let's never think about that again" 792365392
Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 18/09/2026me, every time I start a new job, annoying every single coworker: have you heard about our lord and savior pytest 000
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherPer Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026A paper is finished when the embarrassment of submitting it becomes smaller than the embarrassment of still working on it 630254
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherDave Willner @dwillner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026At TrustCon this year I talked about a technique we’ve developed for automatically optimizing content-moderation policies, using an inversion of the binocular labeling approach Zentropi had already pioneered. Today we're shipping the tool that technique became. blog.zentropi.ai/optimizing-o...blog.zentropi.aiOptimizing our Policy OptimizersToday, we are releasing our next-generation policy refinement tools: policy-only correction, label-only correction, and auto-optimization. 3176
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherVladimir Salnikov @v4ldelund.bsky.social · 16/09/2026"just look at the data" final boss 316022
Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 16/09/2026Caused my first production incident at the new job 👏🏻😭 170
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherConspirador Norteño @conspirator0.bsky.social · 15/09/2026For over a year, an unknown entity has been hijacking Bluesky accounts and incorporating them into a spam network that follows real users while serving up a mix of political posts, news links, and plagiarized photos. In recent months, some of the spam accounts' posts have started to go viral. 11396223
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherMicah @rincewind.run · 14/09/2026I do not think anyone has to leave twitter for bluesky but I do think everyone has to leave twitter 223225579
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherAmy Zhang @axz.bsky.social · 14/09/2026We were interested in studying the Bsky custom feed ecosystem, with a focus on feed creators, as arguably the first real instantiation of the vision of middleware providers for social media services like recommendation. The idea always seemed great in theory, but how sustainable is it really? 34315
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherJacky Alciné @jacky.wtf · 23/08/2026If you're moderately technical (aka if you have the inklings of understanding of a programming language and/or know of TCP/IP); this course from @blackskyweb.xyz might be for you if you want to understand how this stuff works (like how does Blacksky/Bluesky work) learn.blacksky.community 36421
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherInformation, Communication & Society @icsjournal.bsky.social · 14/09/2026#OutNow in #iCS Research on coordinated social media manipulation has grown rapidly, but the field lacks a systematic synthesis of empirical findings on observed campaigns. This study addresses that gap through a systematic review of 83 studies. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....tandfonline.comJust the tip of the iceberg? State of the art of coordinated social media manipulation researchSocial media environments are increasingly exploited by manipulative actors through coordinated social media manipulation (CSMM) campaigns: the intentional and deceptive orchestration of social med... 011
Reposted by Ryan J. Gallagherdanah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 14/09/2026PhD students (& new PhDs): I'm hiring a postdoc at Cornell (Ithaca) to conduct a novel study at the intersection of political economy and tech. Applications are due Oct 16. There are a LOT more details in the job ad so make sure to read it thoroughly: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32502lnkd.inLinkedInThis link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn 22221
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherBrandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Get in, folks: a new Russian disinfo campaign is targeting the midterms, specifically Democrats, in what seems to be the first attempt by the Kremlin-backed op to meddle in this year’s U.S. elections. They're faking celebrity videos attacking Dems and are...very stupid. www.ms.now/news/russia-...ms.nowA Russian disinformation campaign is doctoring celebrity videos to meddle in the midtermsThe Kremlin-backed operation, known as Matryoshka, has Hollywood actors telling voters to disavow the Democratic Party and vote Republican. 8824581549
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherBrandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 11/09/2026This story is also a tale of two social media platforms. Seven of the videos were posted to Bluesky, but most were posted to X. Bluesky removed the inauthentic accounts. X did nothing. 5415125
Reposted by Ryan J. Gallagherkate conger @kateconger.com · 11/09/2026Over six months, we tracked the appearance of child sexual abuse material on X. We found images from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's database, which is considered one of the most highly vetted and which many tech companies block on upload. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/t...nytimes.comElon Musk Has Pledged to Rid His Platform, X, of Child Sexual Abuse, but It PersistsReviews by the Canadian Center for Child Protection and The New York Times found that explicit images of children remain on the social media site owned by Elon Musk. 122068929
Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 11/09/2026the people yearn for open networks even if they don't know it. think of how much content is screenshots across platforms, and think of how it could just be all on the same protocol so you can share it anywhere 040
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherMaria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 10/09/2026New from our lab! #COLM2026 When people generate stories, they don't just write one prompt. Instead, they explore narrative space via branching edits 🌱 We reconstruct 24k of these edit trees 🌳 from chat logs and map edit types, story formats, how they relate to tree depth, and more! 29629
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherAlexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 10/09/2026New on @indicator.media: Community Notes on Instagram covered just 3% of false posts debunked by the US bureau of AFP Fact Check. This analysis comes one day after Meta announced it would expand the program to 16 new countries.indicator.mediaMeta says Community Notes is bigger than fact-checking. That's not the whole storyCrowdsourced fact-checking on Instagram covered just 3% of false posts debunked by one fact-checking website 1169
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherColin @colin-fraser.net · 10/09/2026I'm having some fun in this thread but I do think you should get in trouble for unleashing insane hacker robots on the open Internet that you've explicitly instructed to attack critical public infrastructure, which, to be clear, it eventually succeeds at. 745074
Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 10/09/2026I don't really understand why we're letting AI companies run "tests" that involve real hacking and supply chain attacks Can you imagine if they tried to publish that ten years ago? It would have been a bigger scandal than the FB emotional contagion study and ended multiple careers 181
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherMike Sager @mikesager.net · 10/09/2026If you write a math program to predict text fairly accurately and then build a layer to run other programs, and then spec your programs to use your language layer and design a task for it to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities, it is going to do that using vulnerable websites. 14414
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherJoshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 08/09/2026This sucks for the researchers, but also this is why you should only use an Enterprise license if you use AI for research, since that comes with data protections that would make this behavior very actionable., If you use a private account, however, any institutional data protections don’t apply. 22810
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherStanford Tech Impact and Policy Center @techimpactpolicy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026The Journal of Online Trust and Safety is thrilled to release its new special issue: Digital Intersectionality and Marginalization in the Majority World. 🌏 🔗 tsjournal.org/index.php/jo... #JOTS #TrustAndSafety #MajorityWorld #GlobalSouth 155
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherQuinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 08/09/2026The Navier-Stokes fight is a perfect encapsulation of where AI development is right now: this should be really cool and exciting, and instead because of Silicon Valley egos it's become a fight over cheating, surveillance, and companies trying to get one up over the other 749682
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherDave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 08/09/2026My AI takes: -data centers: still bad. -A.I. for coding: if the coders say it works, I'm not gonna fight them over that. -How big of a deal we make out of A.I. coding really depends on where you sit. -A.I. isn't vaporware... but the A.I. future ABSOLUTELY is. davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/a-few-note...davekarpf.beehiiv.comA few notes on the state of AI right nowA.I. isn't vaporware. But the A.I. future ABSOLUTELY is. 1218332
Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 06/09/2026What books are best to read more about the (slave) labor conditions of people coerced into running online scams? 275
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherROOST @roost.tools · 04/09/2026We’re holding our Osprey Working Group call in just under an hour and a half (1730 UTC)! This public meeting brings adopters, contributors, and curious folks together to discuss and plan the Osprey open source project that helps power T&S at Bluesky, Matrix, Discord, & more. Come join us!github.comSeptember 4, 2026 · roostorg osprey · Discussion #484Our bi-weekly working group call is Friday 1730–1830 UTC! Google Meet #osprey in the ROOST Discord Proposed discussion topics: Adopters! Pain points, feedback, questions, etc. ROOST/Community updat... 062
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherJoshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 04/09/2026“Communicative strategies of encouraging suspension of disbelief and invoking deictic references to the [present] in order to leverage the authority of the dead... raises questions around the rights and responsibilities of publics, of digital platforms, and of the dead themselves.” #CommSkydoi.org‘This here is a true representation of who I was’: Synthetic media and the authority of the dead - Graham Meikle, Johanna Sumiala, 2026The dead are increasingly being resurrected through synthetic media. This article draws inspiration from the histories of both manipulated media and mediations ... 021
Reposted by Ryan J. Gallagherjon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 02/09/2026The slop factory is now claiming to have invented iterative, abductive research design… 20th century ethnography would like a word, sir. 311643
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherGreta Warren @gretawarren.bsky.social · 02/09/2026How do people use images to spread misinformation online?🖼️ We developed a taxonomy, analysed 27k posts from X in 7 languages & found: 🔹Slanted framing of real images is more common than deepfakes and doctored images 🔹Vaccine misinfo borrows credibility via news screenshots arxiv.org/abs/2608.29681 054
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherGraphika @graphika.com · 25/08/2026Graphika's new report, Umbrae Ex Machina, is out today! The research, conducted by Graphika and Code For Africa with support from Meta, exposes a network of fabricated journalists and experts planted across African news outlets to advance Russian interests. Access the full report now!graphika.comUmbrae Ex Machina | GraphikaGraphika and Code for Africa expose 44 Russian-linked ghost reporters and fake experts spreading pro-Kremlin narratives across African news outlets since 2021. 057
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherMohsen Mosleh @mmosleh.bsky.social · 31/08/2026New preprint: Community Notes are good at correcting posts. But do they change the people behind them? We tracked 19,854 corrected accounts on X — 11.9M posts, 4 weeks before/after each correction. The answer: it depends who you are. @oii.ox.ac.uk 📎 arxiv.org/abs/2608.27526arxiv.orgCommunity corrections have divergent downstream effects across corrected accountsCommunity-based fact-checking can reduce the spread of annotated misleading posts, but whether it produces lasting behavioral change among corrected authors remains unclear. Here, we conduct a large-s... 2158
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherMatt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 29/08/2026This guy is running dozens of methane gas turbines around the clock to try to get a robot to say mr gotcha lines 343658
Reposted by Ryan J. Gallagherlastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 28/08/2026Top-tip: if anyone wants to give you the kind of "mentorship" that you being unionised would prevent, get a new mentor fast. 14613124
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherDrew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 28/08/2026New: Americans' feelings toward Flock & license-plate readers have completely flipped since last year. More Americans now oppose police use than support it, saying the cameras don't make them feel safer and that they don't want any near their homes. Gift link: wapo.st/4gwxmTq 527478
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherRamon Astudillo @ramon-astudillo.bsky.social · 27/08/2026NVIDIA agrees to buy HF www.reuters.com/technology/n...reuters.comNvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reportsNvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, a repository of open-source AI models, for $12.9 billion, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person with knowledge of the deal. 1199
Reposted by Ryan J. GallagherGraze Social @graze.social · 26/08/2026graze.leaflet.pubBetter, TogetherAn announcement from Graze 1615741