An article by @samlai.bsky.social @yoyoel.com @noupside.bsky.social @klonick.bsky.social @mallory.techpolicy.social.ap.brid.gy @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy and @aaron.bsky.team?!?!?!
Basically the Wu-Tang Clan of the fediverse right here...
Well played, @carnegieendowment.org
Super grateful that I got to explore these questions with @yoyoel.com, @noupside.bsky.social, @klonick.bsky.social, @mallory.techpolicy.social.ap.brid.gy, @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy, and @aaron.bsky.team!
Defederation on decentralized social media offers new possibilities for online governance. How can it be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety?
Read more here:
Our very own @samlai.bsky.social will be speaking at this panel next Wednesday. Learn more here:
Governments are intervening in information ecosystems with very little understanding of how they work. That leads to a belief that there are lessons learned in one that can be applied to others. But what might work in Finland could be disastrous elsewhere:
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
@lageneralista.ca, @samlai.bsky.social and John Hicks propose a framework for assessing national information ecosystems that can help policymakers understand the operating environment where threats like foreign interference exist.
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
In a new publication, @samlai.bsky.social, @benimmo.bsky.social, Derek Ruths and @lageneralista.ca lay out four key questions that underpin successful measurement of changes caused by GenAI:
Congrats to @samlai.bsky.social and a big thank you to everyone who contributed. Shout out to Jon Bateman for his help on the final stretch. @ieproject.bsky.social takes a village to be sure.
Each info ecosystem is different. But often researchers/policymakers look at their own and devise frameworks to apply elsewhere. @samlai.bsky.social has put many months into this piece for @ieproject.bsky.social highlighting why we need a more inductive approach to understand the info environment.
Phenomenal work by @samlai.bsky.social at CEIP - featuring my comments on public health communication in Vietnam and the persistence of legacy media infrastructure, in particular the loudspeaker network.
What is interesting about this excellent article by @samlai.bsky.social is that many of these concerns also apply in global minority countries. Understanding better how the context affects the demand of information quality is probably the next research question
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
In what ways do Global North approaches to research and policymaking on the information environment fall short at addressing Majority World concerns? How can they be improved? I spoke with 54 experts around the world to learn more:
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
I did a podcast on the fediverse -- especially Bluesky -- with @samlai.bsky.social. Quite timely, if I say so myself! Check it out.
podcast.techfreedom.org/episodes/391...
It’s a bit more complicated than that! I liked what @dustyweb.bsky.social and @bnewbold.net had to say about it:
dustycloud.org/blog/how-dec...
whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net...
If you’d like to read more about what governance looks like in the fediverse, I have to recommend @kissane.bsky.social and @tinysubversions.bsky.social’s report:
erinkissane.com/fediverse-go...
Of course we had to mention @mmasnick.bsky.social’s paper on “Protocols, Not Platforms”, which inspired this very platform:
knightcolumbia.org/content/prot...
And here are some links to works I referenced in the podcast. A lot of what I cover here draws from my past work with @yoyoel.com:
www.techpolicy.press/online-safet...
Thanks @corbinkbarthold.bsky.social for inviting me on to chat about decentralized social media, Bluesky, and the trust and safety challenges associated with the space!
I compile these weekly threads on jobs and opportunities on all things related to the information environment. Hoping it’s useful to some folks out there, please do check it out!
The project I work on at CEIP joined Bluesky today. Give us a follow to get regular updates on publications and opportunities in the space!
Periodic reminder that I made a #trustandsafety starter pack. Let me know about new arrivals who should be added to this list!
Thank you! @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy, Mallory Knodel and @tomcoates.bsky.social would be the folks to chat with about that!
If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media on decentralized platforms, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth. www.techpolicy.press/online-safet...
If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write @samlai.bsky.social and @yoyoel.com.
More than anything else I’ve written, my new piece about the “compliance-ization” of Trust and Safety felt like news reporting. It describes major changes in platform content moderation that are self-evident to many people inside platforms, and largely invisible to everyone else.
t.co/pwriZQqZhM
This work builds on a journal article that came out earlier this year. You can find that here:
www.tsjournal.org/index.php/jo...
Some work is already under way to close these gaps. The Social Web Foundation @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy, @iftas.org, Columbia University’s Trust and Safety Tooling Consortium and others have been working to develop tooling for scalable trust and safety governance.
Here’s how we fix it:
(1) Larger platforms can fund tool development efforts and share info on their moderation decisions
(2) A multi stakeholder structured hub curating pooled data to identify threat actors
(3) Tool builders can create platforms for mods to share information with each other
tl;dr T&S on decentralized social media remains hindered by:
(1) a lack of technical tooling for scalable T&S operations
(2) architectural constraints where admins and mods only see what’s happening on their own instance, making it difficult to detect threats spread across multiple instances