Sara M Abdulla

Desensitized to tyranny Constant crisis numbed us to emergency, and made despotism feel banal. But we can recalibrate through memory, and an imagined future.

When everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. The news cycle makes the National Guard in Chicago mere noise. More here:

saraofmagdeline.substack.com/p/desensitiz...

The root of so many divides is miscommunication, or not understanding the underlying message in others' intent. Apologies are especially fraught: some use them to connect, others see them as admissions of guilt. More here: saraofmagdeline.substack.com/p/apologies-...

Are Deepfakes “Ab”Normal Enough? On Using Norm Shifts in Gender and Sexuality Safety Measures Nonconsensual deepfakes represent the latest evolution in image-based sexual abuse. Sociotechnical factors may enable abuse. This article suggests a norm-shifting framework to mitigate abuse through p...

Policy can set rules, but culture defines what people actually do. In IEEE Security and Privacy, I argue that shifting norms is essential to managing AI risks like non-consensual deepfakes.

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/111...

How to See your friends again for again for the first time Making and nurturing friendships requires Seeing others and yourself, again and again. It's a muscle to strengthen inter- and intrapersonally, but when connection is everything, so is how we See.

Making new friends is hard, and seeing old friends with fresh eyes can be even harder.

A reflection on friendship, vulnerability, and radically practicing connection:

saraofmagdeline.substack.com/p/how-to-see...

Directives to drift Daydreams clear mental clutter and brings us closer to our humanity. But dreams are different from ruminations, which stray us farther from the clarity we seek. So how do we wander w/o getting lost?

saraofmagdeline.substack.com/p/directives...

Dreaming isn't doing nothing. It's generative and refreshing, and help us with our ideas and processing. But we're often afraid of our thoughts because we end up ruminating, which leads us to decay.
So how do we tap into our dreams joyfully without getting "stuck?"

Algorithmic Collective Action with Two Collectives | Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.

[FAccT-related link round-up]: It was great to present on measuring Attentional Agency with Zachary Wojtowicz at FAccT. Here's our paper on ACM DL: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

On Thurs Aditya Karan will present on collective action dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... at 10:57 (New Stage A)

Unconditional love’s underbelly Unconditional love is a practice from the giver, not the receiver. We’re told to love wisely, but isn’t wisdom the love itself?

saraofmagdeline.substack.com/p/unconditio...

Unconditional love is the giver, not the receiver. That makes it a constant, active choice and practice.

Automating the reward When using LLMs or the robots, we should ask: are we denying ourselves the reward of the process?

open.substack.com/pub/saraofma...

I'm glad my laundry is automated, but there are other chores I enjoy for intrinsically. Sometimes, it gets hard to tell the difference.

Really enjoyed presenting the paper, and good questions on tech company policy around children vs govt policy:

They say your contribution should "fill a gap" but is it ok if it mostly just widens existing ones

Tomorrow I'll be presenting on other values in tension in children's online media policy in the "Regulating Speech, Regulating Tech, Regulating Society" session at noon. #ICA2025

We presented our first project (still ongoing) examining contested values in urban surveillance and violence prevention. First presentation with my advisor!
#ICA2025

t.co/USEbgR72hh

I've been thinking about how in my PhD and in my previous research, I sometimes struggle to finish projects or papers once I've scratched the itch of answering a question. Wrote up some thoughts on an accomplishment-curiosity motivating dichotomy.

When Kindness Kills How Algorithms Accelerate Savior Swarms

Important dynamic to think about in these times (and other moments of crisis):
Savior swarming.

medium.com/datasociety-...

‘Nobody was tricked into voting for Trump’: Why the disinformation panic is over Eight years ago, Trump and Brexit sparked fears social media was corroding reality. Now, that narrative is crumbling.

Really like this @politico.com article about the post-disinfo era…. www.politico.eu/article/nobo...

Writing isn't what you do after you have an idea. It's how you develop an inkling into an insight.

Turning thoughts into words sharpens reasoning. What's fuzzy in your head is clear on the page.

"I'm not a writer" shouldn't stop you from writing. Writing is a tool for thinking.