Toward a theory of network gatekeeping: A framework for exploring information control

Gatekeeping: A critical review

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Online Governance Surfaces and Attention Economies

This paper considers the intersection of governance and attention in digital contexts. In particular, it argues for the relevance of ‘attention economies’, or the analysis of human attention as a resource, to ‘governance surfaces’, or the means available for organisational adaptation and action. Existing theoretical frameworks for the governance of community-managed resources lack adequate consideration for how people’s attention is engaged and directed. To address this gap, this paper proposes heuristics that assess how attention relates to governance in online organisations. The heuristics are informed by literature on attention economies and governance, as well as three case studies that consider recent attempts to address attention in the design of governance surfaces in blockchain-based systems. The resulting heuristics serve as analytical and normative tools to enable researchers and system designers to better understand attention in a governance system. They invite consideration of whether the structure of attention in a system is appropriate, efficient, and just.

The web can be weaponised – and we can't count on big tech to stop it | Tim Berners-Lee

It’s dangerous having a handful of companies control how ideas and opinions are shared. A regulator may be needed

interfluidity » Consensus not censorship

We’ve become obsessed over the past few years with the problem of misinformation. And for good reason. “Flood the zone with shit” is now standard operating procedure for a variety of interests and factions. Groups who pretend to be above that kind of thing let confirmation bias do the same work, elevating conjectures they find convenient to believe far beyond the evidentiary basis for believing them, and transmuting concurrence among prestigious groups whose biases are aligned into “authority” to which they demand deferrence. Casual information consumers become divided into two camps, the “do your own research” types who imagine, mistakenly, that they are capable of seeing through all this (and so succumb to their own confirmation bias), and those who more accurately understand that they cannot reliably distinguish truth from bullshit (and so opt out of democratic deliberation with a shrug, other than perhaps to vote for the candidates whose political party they distrust less).

Leveraging Motivations to Curb Misinformation: Self-Affirmation Reduces the Appeal of Political Conspiracy Theories

Abstract: In an era where digital misinformation poses significant challenges to societal well-being, this study explores a novel approach to preserving information integrity by addressing the motivational underpinnings of conspiracy theory engagement. As conspiracy theories proliferate online, traditional fact-checking and debunking strategies often prove ineffective due to the self-reinforcing nature of conspiracy theories. This research investigates whether a priori self-affirmation interventions can reduce individuals’ propensity to engage with conspiracy theories by preemptively fulfilling the ego-protective function these theories often serve. Using a randomized experiment ( N = 451), this study finds that participants who completed a self-affirmation task were less likely to read politicized conspiracy theories, and those who chose to read a conspiracy theory reported greater feelings of affirmation than those who did not. Thus, bolstering individuals’ self-integrity may offer an opportunity to mitigate the appeal of politicized conspiracy theories.

Loss of Oversight: How AI systems may become harder to audit, monitor, and investigate

The safety of advanced AI systems increasingly depends on the ability to oversee them: to audit models for concerning behaviours before deployment, monitor their activity during operation, and investigate incidents after they occur. This report maps the landscape of AI oversight and assesses how it is likely to change. Drawing on 25 expert interviews across frontier AI developers, government, NGOs, and academia, together with a literature review and internal analysis, we examine five sources of oversight signal: model behaviour, chain-of-thought reasoning, internals activations and circuits, memory architectures, and honesty training. For each source, we identify the properties that current oversight relies on, the pathways by which these properties could degrade, and the technical levers available to preserve them. Our central finding is that literature and expert opinion support the conclusion that current oversight rests on foundations that are likely to erode, absent effective intervention. We recommend that developers track and report shifts in oversight-relevant properties, preserve oversight affordances by design, and invest in emerging oversight techniques as fallbacks against continued degradation of current methods.

Custodians of the Internet

A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media platforms police what we post online—and the large societal impact of these decisions Most use...

Symposium: A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries

In recent years, the concept of “information fiduciaries” has surged to the forefront of debates on platform regulation. In a forthcoming essay, we question the wisdom of applying a fiduciary framework to dominant digital platforms.

The hacker crackdown: law and disorder on the electronic frontier

A journalist investigates the past, present, and future…

Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols

Calls to decentralize feed-based social media have been driven by concerns about the concentrated power of centralized platforms and their societal impact. In response, numerous decentralized social media protocols have emerged, each interpreting “decentralization” in a different way. We analyze four such protocols (ActivityPub, AT Protocol, Nostr, and Farcaster) drawing on protocol documentation, media coverage, direct usage, and semi-structured interviews with protocol developers and experts to situate each protocol within its socio-technical goals. To support this analysis, we develop a grounded lexicon that facilitates the description and comparison of analogous components across each protocol. With it, we show how each protocol distributes control over key components differently, shaping who holds power over critical aspects such as user identity, curation, and infrastructural ownership. By examining protocols as socio-technical artifacts, we show how they prioritize different values and make distinct trade-offs, providing CSCW researchers with a lens to more effectively evaluate and design future decentralized social media systems.

The Relational Origins of Rules in Online Communities

Where do rules come from in online communities? This study investigates how and why online communities adopt and change their rules. We conducted a grounded theory-based analysis of 40 in-depth interviews with community leaders from subreddits, Fandom wikis, and Fediverse servers, and identified seven processes involved in the adoption of online community rules. Our findings reveal that, beyond operational reasons like regulating behavior and solving problems, rules are also adopted and changed for relational reasons, such as signaling or reinforcing community legitimacy and identity to other communities. While rule change was often prompted by challenges during community growth or decline, change also depended on volunteer leaders' work capacity, the presence of member feedback mechanisms, and relational dynamics between leaders and members. Our findings extend prior theories from social computing and organizational research, illustrating how institutionalist and ecological explanations of the relational origins of rules complement operational accounts. Finally, we build on these explanations to offer a set of design propositions that reflect the relational aspects of rules and rulemaking across communities' lifecycles.

Redressing the Balance: A Yin-Yang Perspective on Information Technology

Information is an essential aspect of how we interact with the world around us. We acquire information and then integrate it to build knowledge, understanding, and trust, which in turn serve in preparing actions. Information technology (IT) is supposed to support all these phases of information processing. But does it? An assessment of IT through the yin-yang lens from Chinese philosophy shows that over the last decades, support for the yin processes of building knowledge, understanding, and trust has been neglected, the focus of most research and development having been on the yang processes of acting. IT shares this imbalance with other aspects of Western and globalized culture. I discuss possible directions for re-establishing a yin-yang balance in IT, as a small contribution to redressing the balance in the world at large.