The Role of Media in Political Polarization| Inoculation Can Reduce the Perceived Reliability of Polarizing Social Media Content
Little research is available on psychological interventions that counter susceptibility to polarizing online content. We conducted 3 studies (n1 = 472, n2 = 193, n3 = 772) to evaluate whether psychological resistance against polarizing social media content can be conferred, using the Bad News game, a “technique-based inoculation” intervention that simulates a social media feed. We investigate (1) whether technique-based inoculation can reduce susceptibility to content designed to fuel intergroup polarization; (2) whether technique-based inoculation can offer cross-protection against misinformation techniques that people were not inoculated against; and (3) whether political ideology plays a role in how people engage with anti-misinformation interventions. In Studies 1 and 3 (but not Study 2), we found that technique-based inoculation significantly reduces the perceived reliability of polarizing content and offers partial cross-protection against untreated misinformation techniques. We found no effect for attitudinal certainty and news-sharing intentions. Finally, we report preliminary evidence that people may choose to engage with politically congruent news topics within the intervention.
Streetlight — Field Guide
Worse on Purpose
Investigative essays on corporate enshittification — how the brands you trusted made everything worse on purpose, and who profits when they do.
Well-intentioned obscenity
An LLM lied about me at the office and I'm cranky about it. That interaction makes me think a lot about how LLMs are becoming normalized, though, and what we're looking at in terms of their role in human-to-human interactions in the future.
The Algorithmic Management of Polarization and Violence on Social Media
Access the PDF version of this essay by clicking the icon to the right.
Capturing our Attention
What are the harms of misinformation? It’s widely believed that it causes false belief, including false beliefs in quite bizarre claims. I argue that this threat is greatly exaggerated: while plaus...
Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂ (@elena@aseachange.com)
[3 media attachments] Dear friends, Please gather around for a long post about #WSocial and how they are responding to critiques. I have noticed a trend: W Social leaders and staunch supporters are describing any critical posts about the company as "targeted disinformation." Its CEO said they will soon have a technical solution in place for this. Oh?!? 🔗: https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mtqufy6g4s2r I suppose the "targeted disinformation" claims are about recent posts by the likes of me and @pallenberg about troubling hate speech that is allowed on W Social. Claims backed by hard evidence, in the form of screenshots and video captures. (I am increasingly doing screen recordings of problematic posts and interactions by W Social people because they have a tendency to delete evidence - like an infamous comment on a video by the Instutute for Remigration). ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ Discrediting sources, renaming evidence as "disinformation" and creating a victim narrative has a long, storied history. ⬆️ ⬆️ ⬆️ But I'm digressing. I speak up about W Social because: - Mainstream media runs PR fluff about them; - Horrid hate speech on the platform is completely unmoderated. W Social is currently showing the limits of free speech absolutism. Its CEO wrote: "We don’t need W to become another echo chamber." Reminds you of something? Atmosphere user @echna.bsky.social astutely remarked that "W Social is on an X speedrun, without ever having been like Twitter." 🔗: https://mu.social/profile/echna.bsky.social/post/3mtqlknzork2t Bluesky, #Blacksky, and #Northsky have mechanisms in place to report hate speech - and I am super thankful for that. As of today, I cannot report to W Social posts by their users that contain hate speech. The W Social moderation list's only purpose is to make a distinction between verified users and bots. Compare it with Blacksky's moderation list and be amazed (see screenshots). What's the big deal about the lack of content moder…
When Nature Calls: The Enshittification of Science and Its Enablers
Proof-of-work papers, policy laundering, and the collapse of self-correction
Researchers Show How Meta's 'Pervert Glasses' Are Used to Harass Women
A new study shows how pickup artist influencers use smart glasses to create content, and the connection between covert recording and harm.
The Blacksky path towards resilient social media
A journalist gets blocked by Bluesky, but her Bluesky posts can still be seen via Blacksky. This apparent contradiction goes to the heart…
The Blacksky path towards resilient social media
A journalist gets blocked by Bluesky, but her Bluesky posts can still be seen via Blacksky. This apparent contradiction goes to the heart…
Situational Blindness
This response may be read as a standalone piece, though it will of course be more meaningful if you read the original article first.
Everything is about to “go dark”
I’m coming down from spending a few days at Usenix Security, right here in my hometown of Baltimore. This means that my days have been taken up with two kinds of conversation: first, explaini…
Capturing our Attention by @neillevy.bsky.social "we possess sophisticated capacities of epistemic vigilance, which work reasonably well to distinguish reliable from unreliable information, but ... we do not have parallel defences against attentional capture" > tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00048402.202…
X is still better than Bluesky at combating misinformation
Grace
Clearing up a misconception I’m seeing floating around: OpenAI didn’t “misconfigure” Artifactory to allow agents to make arbitrary network requests. The agents exploited a zero day vulnerability in Artifactory to be able to do this.
