@katestarbird.bsky.social
Researcher of online rumors & disinformation. Former basketball player. Prof at University of Washington, HCDE. Co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. Personal account: Views may not reflect those of my employer.
No, that’s not the subtext. I’m suggesting that claims that stolen SSNs will be used, in conjunction with the SAVE act, as part of an effort to steal the 2026 election are unfounded — and unnecessary. What’s in the SAVE act alone is bad enough.
I'm a NH election official. Our reg law is a slightly more flexible version of SAVE Act. Just had local/school elections, so dealt w impact. Folks: It's going to be bad. Especially for married women who took hubby's name, young folk registering for 1st time, less educated folk who don't follow info.
We need to fight back against bad laws (don't pass them, challenge them if they're passed) that change rules to make it harder to vote. We need to call out federal interference where we see it. And we need to make sure everyone checks their registration and then checks it again before the deadline!
There are good reasons why we don't want DOGE boys to have SSNs, but massive election interference isn't one. And we should be worried about DHS using voter roll data to kick people off the rolls (DOUBLE CHECK YOUR REGISTRATIONS!). But these two things don't have to be connected to be scary.
<Kate sits back and waits to absorb an angry blue wave of posts from folks who have newly discovered the progressive wing of "rigged election" influencers.>
The SAVE Act is a massive voter suppression bill -- and folks should definitely be resisting it. It's been motivated and justified by conspiracy theories about election fraud. But we don't need new conspiracy theories (about DOGE, stolen SSNs, and future fraud) to justify pushing back against it.
Donald Trump letting you know how the authoritarian capture of the media is going, in case you missed it. Unlike other authoritarians in places like Hungary and Poland he has no worries about advertising his authoritarian take over of the media.
Oh, it’ll happen later, during another President’s time, and they’ll blame it on him or her.
I’m old enough to recall the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2010), its devastating impacts on communities along the gulf, and how the right blamed Obama for not stopping the leak. Our government doesn’t have the capacity to do disaster response at the bottom of the ocean - or to clean a massive spill.
An obscure methodological tweak -- a change in the source of data on the price of legal services -- resulted in meaningfully lower monthly PCE inflation in January. That's prompting questions about why the change was made and why it wasn't disclosed publicly.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/b... #EconSky
Donald Trump is demanding that Congress pass the SAVE Act, an anti-voting bill that would stop millions of U.S. citizens from voting. It could come up for a vote in the Senate next week. Stay informed by subscribing to The Briefing, our free weekly newsletter: bit.ly/3Yrz5jM
All of this and: what happens after they make us all dependent and then start lifting the price? A new digital divide with AI companies deciding where the line is and how it’s enforced.
Have been hearing and seeing the same. For some reason, this doesn't bother me (as much as other uses). Across the history of computing, many people have worked to make it easier for people to communicate with computers -- to replace what Ted Nelson called the "priestly class" of programmers.
Clive Thompson's (@clivethompson.bsky.social)
overview of this weird moment in AI-enabled coding is just masterful: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/m... Summarizes what I'm finding and what I'm hearing from friends who are earlier adopters than me.
Conservative activists are circulating a draft executive order that would give President Trump sweeping authority over elections if a national emergency was declared. Despite the president's claims, their arguments are far from “irrefutable,” write @annabower.bsky.social & @mollyroberts.bsky.social.
Karl Weick (organizational psychologist, foundational work on sensemaking) had a great refrain: “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?” I often think about this in relation to how AI can interfere w/ thinking by substituting its words for ours. This experimental study offers evidence.
Important work exploring Rogan's audience:👇
"...younger, male, & with low educational attainment"
More "conspiratorial" thinking & "conservative media consumption"
"politically diverse yet culturally unified"
intensifies "cultural polarization."
Preprint: preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...
“The pandemic” didn’t “breathe” the hesitance, @apoorvanyt.bsky.social. The anti-vaccine movement leaders made a conscious decision to exploit it to undermine trust. They literally made videos about how they would do exactly that, before the vaccines existed. Show your readers those videos!
🚨NEW REPORT🚨 datasociety.net/library/deep... Deepfake Financial Fraud: The Global Regulation of AI-Driven Scams - a collab with Anya Schiffrin & Navya Sinha, Anusha Wangnoo, Kaylee Williams, Elnara Huseynova & Audrey Hatfield at @columbiasipa.bsky.social
This isn't going to go well for them...
I think about this photo a lot.
He also seems to have a magical power, aided by friendly and/or useless media, to bend reality to his will. Hopefully he’ll fail in this case. But that only through concerted effort to tell and keep telling the truth about this event. Make it impossible for him to deny.
I’m not convinced Trump’s rewriting of the horrible bombing of a girls school won’t be Russia hoaxed, election rigged, and Chinese bioweaponed into Trumpist canon.
How is this legal? If you use my image and name to sell basketball shoes… you have to pay me. So, it can’t be different to use my name to give paper feedback? Who knows a lawyer? I need some $ for my research…
Are they selling our names as their "experts" without even asking much less compensating? We need some NIL for faculty members now?
Wait, WHUT?
A new lawsuit accuses the administration of violating the First Amendment by threatening the visas of researchers for work on disinformation and content moderation of social media. n.pr/4be42ye
"The Trump administration is engaged in a brazen and far-reaching campaign of censorship while cynically and falsely claiming that censorship is what it is fighting." CITR v. Rubio, new case just filed in DDC by @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org. knightcolumbia.org/content/tech...
Since we got “Iran interfered in the election!” as a justification for war, have Maduro sitting in jail, and Tulsi was snuffling around Georgia looking for “evidence” of god knows what—here are the Chinese, Vezuelan, Italian, Iranian, etc conspiracy theories liars in power are dredging back up. 📡💻🗳️
John Oliver on right wing grifter, "brain" behind the "censorship industrial complex" and USAID destroyer, Mike Benz:
"a chronically online lunatic"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU8S...