iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Yoel Roth

Natalie Lung @natalielung.com · 11/09/2026

Wrote about what this means for two-party consent states: bsky.app/profile/nata...

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 09/09/2026

*screaming internally in HIPAA*

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 09/09/2026

Apple quietly dropped a ton of detail about the Apple Watch’s new always-on don’t-call-it-transcription feature and it is FASCINATING. support.apple.com/en-us/148354

Like all of our products and features, Audio Intelligence on Apple Watch was built from the ground up to protect your privacy.
• Audio is not recorded or stored. Audio Intelligence features don't create audio recordings. No audio can be accessed by the operating system, apps, you, or even Apple.
There is no recording to share, forward, or produce if requested by any party, because no recording exists.
• Raw audio is never accessible. Audio flows into a protected buffer inside the S11 chip's Secure Exclave — a hardware-isolated compartment built into the silicon of Apple Watch and iPhone that processes sensor data separately from the rest of the system. Data that is processed and analyzed in the Secure Exclave can't be accessed by the operating system, apps, you, or even Apple. Once processed, this data is immediately deleted.
• Siri Recap and Live Rewind help jog your memory, not provide a detailed record. Siri Recap doesn't produce a transcript. It generates a brief, high-level summary — comparable to notes you might jot down after a conversation. Live Rewind shows a text snippet of what was just said in the last 15 seconds, so you can catch something you missed.

• No speaker attribution. By design, Audio Intelligence features don't identify and attribute speakers. Siri Recap may contain names if mentioned in the conversation, but doesn't directly attribute speakers (for example, "John said..." or labeling as "Speaker A" versus
"Speaker B"). Similarly, Live Rewind may transcribe what someone said word-for-word, but does not attribute quotes to speakers.
• Audible and visible signals for Live Rewind.
When activated, an audible chime plays from the speaker on your Apple Watch, even if your Apple Watch is on silent or you have headphones connected. A full-display animation and microphone indicator appear on the display, and a distinct double-press gesture is required to activate Live Rewind. This is to alert those nearby that the feature has been activated.
• Omitted content. Siri Recaps are designed to omit potentially harmful content, such as language that promotes self-harm or hateful speech, and sensitive information, such as financial data, government-assigned identifiers, authentication data, and certain personal identifiers.
• Be mindful of those around you. While audio is not recorded and stored, and no speakers are attributed, consider those around you where conversations might be private or sensitive.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 06/03/2026

I asked Claude to generate a book jacket blurb for a novel inspired by Heated Rivalry and the Lumen database, and, umm…

NOTICE AND TAKEDOWN
Every day, thousands of removal requests flow into the Lumen Database — the public archive where the internet's most powerful actors are forced to show their work. Most requests are routine. Some are weapons.
When copyright attorney Marcus Vega files a takedown notice targeting Clearwire, a scrappy digital rights nonprofit, he expects the usual: compliance, a form letter, maybe a sternly worded reply. What he gets instead is Eli Marsh - Clearwire's counternotice specialist, former EFF researcher, and the most infuriating person Marcus has ever had the professional misfortune of opposing.
Eli knows the law. He also knows Marcus - knows his firm's clients, his win rate, the pattern of industries he protects. What Eli can't account for is what happens when the two of them end up at the same internet governance conference in Geneva, arguing in bad faith over cocktails until they're not arguing at all.

The notices keep coming. So do the counternotices.
So do the emails that start as legal correspondence and become something neither of them can quite name.
Marcus has spent his career making inconvenient things disappear. Eli has spent his making sure they can't. Between them sits every question the internet has failed to answer about who gets to control what's public, what's private, and who decides.
Some things, it turns out, can't be taken down.
For readers of Heated Rivalry, Better Than People, and anyone who has ever found themselves deeply, inconveniently attracted to someone who sends documents with tracked changes turned on.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 29/12/2025

I appreciate the forthright acknowledgement of the mistake from the author, and look forward to decisive action by @princetonupress.bsky.social to correct this error, and any others, that made it past their robust editorial process.

Dear Mr. Roth,

I am not sure how it happened, but you are right that I made a mistake in treating the words quoted from your essay as a representation of your views. It may be that when I returned to your essay (which I had previously read) in finishing a draft of the book, I interpreted the bolded text as a “pull quote.” That was a mistake, for which I am extremely sorry. It was my mistake and not that of my co-author.

I am working with Princeton University Press to have that sentence deleted from the book (all future printings and the Kindle edition). Once the Press’s offices re-open after January 2, we will explore the possibilities for an errata statement on the book’s web pages. I will also send out a message on Twitter acknowledging the mistake in misleadingly using the passage from your essay.

I want to offer you my sincere apologies for this very regrettable mistake. My aim and that of my co-author has been to try to cast some light on difficult and important matters about which there is much disagreement. It is far from my intention to mislead concerning the pandemic and decisions made in response to it. Our book has 935 footnotes, but this was not a footnoting error. I deeply regret having made this mistake.

Sincerely, Stephen Macedo

Thank you for the direct acknowledgement of the error, and for the commitment to addressing it. I look forward to confirmation that the steps you outlined have been taken, and hope that you and the team at PUP will do a thorough review of the text to ensure other such errors haven't snuck through.

Dr. Roth

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 27/12/2025

Requested a correction from @princetonupress.bsky.social. Let's see what happens.

Dear Princeton University Press Editorial Team,

I am writing to request a correction to In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. The book contains a significant misquotation that inverts the meaning of my published work.

In 2023, I published an article for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University titled "Getting the Facts Straight: Some Observations on the Fifth Circuit Ruling in Missouri v. Biden." In that piece, I directly refuted false claims about government jawboning of social media platforms. One claim I specifically pushed back against was the myth that the FBI demanded Twitter censor online speech.

And yet, I was recently surprised to find that In Covid's Wake quotes me as stating that "the FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands" — the exact claim I was refuting, presented as though I endorsed it. The book uses my refutation of a false narrative to support that very narrative, employing my name, former position, and scholarly writing to buttress the authors' argument at the expense of the integrity of my own views.

This is not a case of authors disagreeing with my interpretation or selectively quoting from a nuanced argument. The book attributes to me a position that is the precise opposite of what I argued. The passage the authors quote is a section heading that introduces my refutation of that claim, not an endorsement of it.

The misrepresentation is particularly harmful because it lends Princeton University Press's credibility to demonstrably false claims about government censorship. My article exists specifically to establish what actually happened versus what conspiracy theories allege. By quote-mining a section heading and divorcing it from the argument that follows, the book weaponizes my attempt to establish facts against the truth itself.

I request that the authors and Princeton University Press:
Issue a formal correction acknowledging the misquotation
Revise the relevant passage in future editions to accurately represent my argument
Post an erratum on the book's webpage
I recognize that scholarly interpretation involves judgment calls about sources. However, quoting someone's statement of a position they are about to refute as though they endorse that position is not interpretation — it is dishonest, misleading, and a self-evident factual error. This is not a matter of academic disagreement but of basic accuracy in representing published work.

I hope Princeton University Press shares my commitment to factual rigor and will address this matter promptly.

Sincerely,

Yoel Roth, PhD

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 24/12/2025

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty: My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media. Huh? When did I say that?!

A passage from the book In Covid’s Wake, with a highlighted sentence reading: “Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, states that "the FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands," including demands involving domestic speech.”

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

@yoyoel.com at TrustCon making the key point that big platforms can weather storms and absorb blows (litigation, regulatory churn) that kill their smaller rivals. The legal threat may look the same to an array of platforms, but the real question is who can survive it.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 13/05/2025

This is an extraordinary and courageous piece of writing that wrestles with one of the great challenges of this moment: How do you decide whether to remain a part of broken institutions to try to fix them from within?

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 07/01/2025

Genuinely baffled by the unempirical assertion that Community Notes “works.” Does it? How do Meta know? The best available research is pretty mixed on this point. And as they go all-in on an unproven concept, will Meta commit to publicly releasing data so people can actually study this?

We are now changing this approach. We will end the current third party fact checking program in the United States and instead begin moving to a Community Notes program. We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

Ryan J. Gallagher @ryanjgallag.com · 07/01/2025

Community Notes don't work by themselves. So many things don't get labeled because people don't reach "consensus" on them, which is really what Community Notes optimize for, not factuality What an utter failure. So disappointing

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 10/12/2024

One of the things we all really need from platform T&S teams — honest, authentic, human conversations about the impossible tradeoffs involved in this work — is made effectively impossible by the deranged ways a small number of people treat platform staff when they speak publicly. Ask me how I know.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 19/11/2024

Oh no, the Signal icon very subtly changed colors and now it’s setting off my “what is weird right now” alarms every time I unlock my phone

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 12/11/2024

Reminder for corporate folks: It’s oh-crap-I-haven’t-spent-my-annual-learning-stipend season — and most companies allow you to use your learning budget on newspaper/newsletter subscriptions. Good opportunity to support (and expand your access to) independent journalism.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 06/11/2024

Election Day timeline cleanse, featuring Toast and Rye

Two black and white corgis sitting on a white and gray rug on top of a dark brown wood floor, in front of a metal and wood bookshelf

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

Samantha Lai @samlai.bsky.social · 17/10/2024

Decentralized social media platforms offer the promise of alternative governance, but remain ill-equipped to address threats to online safety. How can we change that? Here’s the latest from @yoyoel.com and I: www.techpolicy.press/online-safet...

techpolicy.press

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media | TechPolicy.Press

If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 11/10/2024

Look at these tiny little penguins!

Two Australian little penguins, a small blue-gray bird with a white belly

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 25/09/2024

Should be a really interesting discussion. I'm moderating, but will have representatives from Bluesky, Threads & ActivityPub talking about decentralized moderation...

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 09/09/2024

This is going to be a really great @knightcolumbia.org symposium--about the TikTok ban, foreign disinfo, surveillance at the border, selective deportation, and the exchange of ideas across borders--check out the amazing list of contributors. knightcolumbia.org/events/regar...

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 08/09/2024

a brief guide to terms used in profiles for new site admins: * professional blogger = spammer * digital marketer = spammer * SEO expert = spammer * professional reviewer = spammer * affiliate marketer = spammer * marketing enthusiast = spammer * passionate about blogging = spammer

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 22/08/2024

And if you think this is fun, I dare you to find a way to report abuse originating from a Google Voice number. (Spoiler: It doesn't exist!)

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 22/08/2024

Just spent half an hour digging around Google's support pages to see if there's a form for reporting abuse originating from a Gmail account. Turns out — there is! Submitted a report of the weirdo who sends me very sexually graphic abuse every day. Genuinely curious if Google will do anything.

support.google.com

Report abuse from a Gmail account - Gmail Help

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 17/08/2024

We shall call her Toast, destroyer of gardens

A black and white corgi puppy sitting on gray gravel eating a green fern

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 16/08/2024

The corgis wish you a happy Friday.

Two black and white corgis sitting on a white sofa

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 14/08/2024

Good interview with Yoel by John Starr on the challenges and opportunities within trust and safety youtu.be/v14ySyJhbwo

youtu.be

Safe Space: Talking Trust & Safety with Yoel Roth

YouTube video by Thorn

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 10/08/2024

An especially happy Friday to Rye, who is doing a remarkably good job not eating Toast for lunch despite her constant barking and face-biting.

Two black and white corgis, one 10 months old, the other 10 years old, on a gray stone patio.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 09/08/2024

This is an incredible resource — and as someone who has unthinkingly paid DeleteMe for years, led me to sign up for Optery instead.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 07/08/2024

This is the face of someone who just chewed up a bunch of the irrigation system and feels no remorse whatsoever.

A black and white corgi puppy standing in between two large green ferns

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Samantha Lai @samlai.bsky.social · 05/08/2024

I had a really great time chatting with Jaz Michael-King and @mmccue.bsky.social on Dot Social @flipboard.com about the state of trust and safety on the fediverse: dot-social.simplecast.com/episodes/sam...

dot-social.simplecast.com

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Rebekah Tromble @rebekahtromble.bsky.social · 01/08/2024

Kathleen Searles and I have been researching how to better support and protect colleagues who face backlash when they share their expertise publicly. We prepared this tip sheet for academics who are likely to be doing public-facing engagement this election season. Please share widely.

A list of proactive steps that scholars who are engaged in public-facing work can take to help prevent or reduce the harmful impacts of harassment and other forms of intimidation. For a PDF version, visit https://researchersupport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Tips_for_Safer_Communication.pdf

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Reposted by Yoel Roth

darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 01/08/2024

IF HUMANS CAN SLEEP ON A WATER BED THIS PUP CAN USE HER BOWL TO REST HER SLEEPY HEAD CASE CLOSE

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 31/07/2024

She fell asleep in her water bowl.

A black and white corgi puppy asleep with her face in a blue and gray water bowl

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 29/07/2024

Update: Rye and Toast have reached a peaceful coexistence.

Two black and white corgis, one 10 years old, the other 9 weeks old, curled up napping side by side.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 26/06/2024

Say it louder for the folks in the back: Jawboning is a real problem that deserves real jurisprudence, but this case was always built on lies, misrepresentation, and conjecture. Glad to see the majority recognize that.

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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 07/06/2024

IT IS THAT TIME OF THE WEEK. New Ctrl-Alt-Speech is out. We have guest host @yoyoel.com telling us "the least erotic way to talk about porn" among some fun stories about social media sides including ExTwitter, Facebook, Temu (is that social media?!?) & more podcast.ctrlaltspeech.com/2315966/1521...

podcast.ctrlaltspeech.com

The Internet is (Still) for Porn, with Yoel Roth - Ctrl-Alt-Speech

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Yoel Roth, former head of trust & safety at Twitter and now head o...

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 18/05/2024

Sounds right to me www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

The Toilet Theory of the Internet
CHARLIE WARZEL
TECHNOLOGY | THE ATLANTIC
Allow me to explain my toilet theory of the internet. The premise, while unprovable, is quite simple: At any given moment, a great deal of the teeming, frenetic activity we experience online-clicks, views, posts, comments, likes, and shares-is coming from people who are scrolling on their phones in the bathroom.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 16/05/2024

In retrospect, it’s really my fault for starting a great book right when I need to be grading my students’ final papers…

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 13/05/2024

Just came back to my hotel room to find that someone left me complimentary reading material, and honestly, I’m not mad at the selection.

A German-language book called “Warrior Cats” that mysteriously appeared in my hotel room at some point this afternoon

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Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 12/05/2024

📣 Some personal news: one month from today, my book is out! 🎉 I wrote the 📖 during a wild year as Jim Jordan subpoenaed & Stephen Miller sued me & my colleagues. Now it’s my turn to tell the story. Preorders are open —they really help! If you hate AMZN, small shops on my website. amzn.to/4bbiDJD

amzn.to

Amazon.com: Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality: 9781541703377: DiResta, Renee: Books

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 02/05/2024

I don’t read a lot of books with ERM as a main character, for, uh, obvious reasons, but when I tell you I could not put this book down for the last day and read it in more or less 2 sittings — take that as the endorsement it is.

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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 26/04/2024

Lawmakers must "seek the declassification and urgent publication of as much of the intelligence related to TikTok ... as possible. The public deserves more than hypotheticals, and eventually, a court will demand the specifics" www.techpolicy.press/the-us-gover... @justinhendrix.bsky.social

techpolicy.press

The US Government Must Show Its Cards on TikTok | TechPolicy.Press

Before passing legislation that could result in the ban of the app, the government should declassify intelligence about the threat, say Justin Hendrix and Ben Lennett.

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