Daniel Zappala

Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It; A Longitudinal Study of Uber's Algorithmic Pay and Pricing Ride-sharing platforms like Uber market themselves as enabling `flexibility' for their workforce, meaning that drivers are expected to anticipate when and where the algorithm will allocate them jobs, ...

New paper out today, accepted at #FAccT2025, led by Jake Stein and me: "Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It; A Longitudinal Study of Uber's Algorithmic Pay and Pricing" arxiv.org/abs/2506.15278

Over the last 3 years, we've been working with @workerinfox.bsky.social to audit Uber's algorithms. 1/

Why is it a useful learning activity for a student to correct an AI system? Isn’t this more valuable for those training the AI than for the student? This seems to complicate learning more than to improve it.

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

I don't have words for how infuriating this is data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mother...

Look at what happens to male teacher salaries (blue line) v.s. female teacher salaries (red line) after collective bargaining laws expire.

Text exceeds alt capacity.

I'm in a phenomenal talk on gender inequality in cybersecurity this morrning and this is such a great cheat sheet for intersectional fair employment.

Oh that’s an interesting form of quality control. Are you using a local instance? I would worry that, even if the venue doesn’t prohibit its use, I would be feeding training data to the LLM without the authors’ consent.

Can you share how you use an LLM to help you with your reviews? Maybe you can convince me that I should try.

Wise words from Steven Peck, a rare scholar who bridges disciplinary worlds like few others—a BYU biology professor who also writes award-winning literary fiction.

Oh I will read this. In the meantime, what is the best way for us to organize popular support for citizenship for undocumented immigrants? I’m no longer interested in “balanced” immigration reform. A simple citizenship process for the vast majority of undocumented immigrants. Who is organizing this?

SOUPS 2025 Mentoring Program The Twenty-First Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2025), August 10–12, 2025, Seattle, WA, USA.

Are you going to be at the best conference, SOUPS (@soupsconference.bsky.social)?

If so, consider signing up to be a mentor or mentee for the mentoring program! It's a great way to meet other folks at the conference :) www.usenix.org/conference/s...

Your article concludes that an information ecosystem needs to get people excited about what they have to offer. I would love to see legacy outlets get creative with weekly news summaries, wikis for recurring issues, and taking a stronger position on identifying who is telling the truth.

SOUPS 2025 Mentoring Program The Twenty-First Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2025), August 10–12, 2025, Seattle, WA, USA.

@sauvik.me and I are co-chairing the SOUPS mentoring!

If you are attending SOUPS, consider signing up to be a mentor or a mentee. It's a wonderful way to connect with others.
www.usenix.org/conference/s...

Science Funding Process =====Written July 11 2025====== Hi all, Just wanted to share some information that is likely relevant to a lot of us, but not always easy to understand, about federal science budget procedure (feel f...

Just sent this as an email to my department but figured I'd share more broadly in case it is useful. This describes the procedure happening now for science funding in Congress (@davidimiller.bsky.social can correct me if I got this wrong). Importantly, there are still actions that can be taken.

Oh hey! Been reading a set of mystery novels set there!

It should not be this hard for a newspaper to admit its errors. Refusing to accept even the smallest amount of accountability is what we have in the authoritarian regime leading this country. We don’t need it in newspapers too.

This is a really good scam attempt. The only clue is a weird sender, and then the phone number is not the real one for Apple Support. But very convincing!

This is going to be fantastic. Join us in Seattle.

Excited to announce the Enigma Track program is now live for USENIX Security '25! Taking place August 13-14, this track delves into technology's societal impacts & future challenges: www.usenix.org/conference/u... 1/8

This would make a solid password

Policy and Research Staff Technologist ...

The greatest job alert! My team at EFF is hiring and you could be on it: www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.p...

Bookmark this. Great resource.

Fantastic thread from Casey. Researchers, you need to think through these issues carefully before starting a project!

Very excited for this! Heard you speak at Enigma some years ago and your talk inspired me to want to do more meaningful work in CS.

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

"computer science is value neutral" is and always has been ridiculous generally, but it's especially and painfully ridiculous (to me) when the topic is cryptography. Philip Rogaway, as just one example, nailed this a decade ago:

Feel welcome to send along your thoughts in whatever form and I’ll see if I have some wisdom to add.

Sadly no but will be at S&P and then SOUPS and USENIX Security

Happy to help with this if you need a hand

This is one of the worst violations of research ethics I've ever seen. Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent, is not "low risk" and, as evidenced by the discourse in this Reddit post, resulted in harm.

Great thread from Sarah, and I have additional thoughts. 🧵

For the last 3 yrs, I was the director for the Science of Science program at the NSF. We funded projects on science communication - science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, citizens engagement & participation in science. 🧵