The outrage bots and attention trolls took the rest of the internet. We saved this slice for you.
Gathering the Custodians of the Internet: Lessons from the First CivilServant Summit - Citizens and Technology Lab
An agenda for citizen behavioral science to maintain and protect the communities we love online.
LLM-Augmented Agent-Based Simulation of Cyber Social Agents
Social media bots are often portrayed as malicious automations to be detected and removed, but automation on social media platforms encompasses a wide spectrum of roles, behaviors, and rhetorical strategies that can shape online discourse in both constructive and destructive ways. This work conceptualizes these automated actors as \textbf{Cyber Social Agents} through a taxonomy of archetypes characterized by their operational tactics and rhetorical style. We integrate this taxonomy into an LLM-driven social simulation, where agents communicate and coordinate in a network environment. Using empirically grounded CSA personas, we simulate heterogeneous online societies to study how agent diversity shapes information diffusion and social influence. Our approach bridges the gap between rule-based agent models and LLM-powered simulations with generated agents that are parameterized from empirical data.
Millions of Volunteers Are Keeping the Internet Human. For Now.
We’re never going back to the human internet we had. But we can hope for a better internet than the AI-dominated one that is emerging, writes Sarah Gilbert.
The political effects of X’s feed algorithm
Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects1. 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.
Sex Workers Built the Internet
An internet history that centers sex workers’ voices and experiences
Generative AI for Pro-Democracy Platforms · From Novel Chemicals to Opera
Online discourse faces challenges in facilitating substantive and productive political conversations. Recent technologies have explored the potential of generative AI to promote civil discourse, encourage the development of mutual understanding in a discussion, produce . . .
The Dark Forest and Generative AI
Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content
New_ Public | After the Feed
What happens after the social media feed? A presentation on the future of conversation, community, and social connection, and how AI will affect the everyday lives of billions.
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A socially motivated website which provides information about protecting your online data privacy and security.
OWID Homepage
Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.
Is this rage bait?
We Need To Rewild The Internet
The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.
An update on the scraper situation
Our article 'Fighting the AI scraper bot scourge', published in early 2025, discussed the probl [...]
We Are Living in a ‘ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic’
"Hey if this is your flyer, I’m not going, I’m not donating, I’m not sharing. Don’t ask me."
After the feed with Eli Pariser, Ben Smith, and Jasmine Sun