Ian Axel Anderson

A DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows for the first time CBP used location data sourced from the online advertising industry to track phone locations. ICE has bought access to similar tools. @evystadium.bsky.social reports.

Story by @josephcox.bsky.social: www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-i...

The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all | Taylor Lorenz Age-verification systems require collecting sensitive data to support the biometric information. In no time, the internet will become a fully surveilled digital panopticon, says technology journalist ...

I have a piece out in @theguardian.com today on how the internet is becoming a fully surveilled digital panopticon and why we need to fight back with everything we have

1908: the Lancet, one of the most respected scientific journals, calls for 18 age limit on reading in bed amidst a moral panic surrounding children becoming "addicted" to novels, which were "designed to keep kids hooked" and destroy their attention/mental health

Table 1 A non-comprehensive list of different (not mutually exclusive) meanings of the word Al, including Al as idea, Al as a type of system, Al as a field of study, and Al as institution(al unit).

The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) means many things to many people (see Table 1). (...) One meaning of ‘AI’ that seems often forgotten these days is one that played a crucial role in the birth of cognitive science as an interdiscipline in the 1970s and ’80s." 2/n

Every month the United States provides even more reason to boycott its products and companies — the strikes on Iran being just the latest.

In light of that, it’s a great time to ditch the products and services of US tech companies. I made a comprehensive guide to help you.

CALL YOUR CONGRESS PERSON NOW!!!!!! Tell them:
— NO to KOSA
— NO to Section 230 reform
— NO to the SCREEN Act
— NO to the App Store Accountability Act
—NO age verification laws
—NO to digital ID systems

Was great to work with a big team of talented researchers on this paper! And to help apply some interesting network science methods to smartphone sensing data + surveys 😁

🚨New pre-print🚨

osf.io/preprints/ps...

What if the relationship between smartphone use and mental health depends not just on specific harmful or beneficial activities, but also on how users transition between activities?

This doesn't seem worth having a Discord account

On the Media The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.

A landmark lawsuit against Google and Meta went to trial this week. The jury’s verdict will influence the outcome of thousands of similar cases across the country. @madlinbmek.bsky.social on what it all means: on-the-media.visitlink.me/IYc6S1

Had a brief cameo to discuss my research in this episode about the social media addiction trials! Really good listen for those interested in these cases in the US…

We absolutely MUST adopt relegation in American sports. How else can we compete with these levels of haters on a global scale?

How Elite Colleges Aided Censorship During the Red Scares Powerful organizations during the Red Scares crafted a world where “academic freedom” was conditional on political allegiance.

In her latest column, @bakerdphd.bsky.social looks at the history of AAU regarding campus free speech. If they took a stance on many key issues today, some status-obsessed public universities would face very difficult membership decisions.

Research finds that people overestimate how many social media users post harmful content--which makes us think the world is worse than it really is.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Appreciate this thread--was curious whether the data backed up that narrative and the anecdotal evidence I'd seen from users across social media. Also 100% agree that more transparency is crucial to getting a complete picture of how the ownership change is/isn't impacting the site.

Wrote about a recent study that suggested calling it "social media addiction" can do more harm than social media itself, in that it takes agency away from people, and makes it more difficult to help people who actually have a problem with not being able to put down social media.

Longtime fan of your work, Mike! Thanks a lot for covering our study, this is a really great summary and analysis of our findings!

As a longtime follower, it’s really cool to see my work covered here! Thank you 🙏🏻

Florida Now Accepting Public Comment on H-1B Visa Hiring Ban University system leaders say they need to pause hiring on the visas for a year to collect information about how universities utilize the program. Only the student and faculty board representatives ob...

Florida took another step Thursday toward banning all its public universities from hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas. The public comment period on the proposal will last two weeks:
www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

The case against efficiency: friction in social media - npj Complexity npj Complexity - The case against efficiency: friction in social media

This one! www.nature.com/articles/s44...

There was a paper recently advocating for friction in certain domains…this also seems like a case where more friction would be beneficial…

Two Major Studies, 125,000 Kids: The Social Media Panic Doesn’t Hold Up For years now, we’ve been repeatedly pointing out that the “social media is destroying kids” narrative, popularized by Jonathan Haidt and others, has been built on a foundation of…

"Haidt’s claims of inherent harm are not well-founded, and the policy proposals to ban kids entirely from social media are a bad idea. For older teenage boys, having no social media was associated with *worse* outcomes than having too much of it"

YouTube video by Taylor Lorenz The Rise and Fall of 'the Resistance'

For anyone new to the idea that Alt National Parks Service is a grift, @taylorlorenz.bsky.social made a nice little primer about the hijacking of resistance politics by hucksters and charlatans

youtu.be/mz3Rf820ozE?...

"Contemporary fascism is simply neoliberalism with its multicultural mask off. We have been heading in this direction since the latter half of the 20th century, at least."

Social media addiction's surprising challenger? Anti-doomscrolling influencers With billions of active users across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms, cutting down on screen time is a common goal for many people.

Was fun to speak with @apnews.com's Kaitlyn Huamani about anti-doomscrolling interventions and my work on social media addiction / habits! Full article here:
apnews.com/article/soci...

Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry, preprint claims Industry-linked studies were also more likely to focus on particular topics, suggesting these ties may be skewing the field

One of the issues that has come up again and again in my reporting on misinformation and social media is the massive influence social media companies have on research in the field.

Last night a preprint dropped that tries to get at this with some numbers. My piece in @science.org (and 🧪🧵 coming):

Governments are banning teenagers from social media to cover up officials' failure to confront real crises. It’s wrong, dangerous, and cruel. Surveys and studies increasingly expose authorities’ self-interested derelictions and political motives behind scapegoating teens, social media, and “mental health.”

Governments are banning teenagers from social media to cover up officials' failure to confront real crises. It’s wrong, dangerous, and cruel. mikemales.substack.com/p/government...

Thanks!! Glad you enjoyed the episode! I'm generally curious about where the boundaries between addiction and habit lie in other contexts, too. If you have the link to that post, let me know!

I am a victim of deepfake porn. The technology has reached ubiquity since I was targeted in 2022.

How many more women and girls need to bear their scars to the world before someone with real power in the tech industry stands up for us?

(Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Great point! That's one thing I wish I had highlighted more in our interview as well. I actually wasn't aware of the Przybylski BBC video (though I'm very familiar with his work!)--thanks for sharing! Amazing to hear you're planning to use mine w/students as well, and curious about their reactions!