Tobia Spampatti, PhD

Koch Bros still pretending to be liberal, spending some crumbs on financing a neoliberal infrastructure while putting their real money and support behind the GOP and profiting massively from their authoritarian regime.

David Autor (@davidautor.bsky.social) just wrote a very kind and thoughtful review of "The Means of Prediction" for the Journal of Economic Literature (@aeajournals.bsky.social):
www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Trump is using immigration policy to suppress speech, lawsuit claims 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.

Independent tech researchers accuse the Trump administration of trying to silence them with threats of visa revocations and deportation. It's leading some to change the focus of their work, self-censor, and even leave the country.

OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers "censors" ... and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.

The real story is that foreign govts try to "interfere" all the time. In 2020 and 2024 we had mechanisms to catch them, call them out, & mitigate damage. Now, those mechanims are gone & the Trump admin would prefer to exploit "foreign interference" to justify a federal take-over of elections.

The essay claims users can eliminate risk from LLMs as long as they exercise (content-based) epistemic vigilance + active participation.

But this argument misses half the story of epistemic vigilance - arguably the more important half. Let's take a look at source-based epistemic vigilance.

4/

Per protocol analysis strikes again!

Folks, if you randomize but then don‘t analyze some of the people who got randomized (maybe because they didn’t adhere to instructions, maybe because they dropped out), randomization will no longer do all the heavy causal inference lifting.

This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions.

It does not.

It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed.

🧵 1/

📢 Reminder: Applications are still open for Summer Institute 2026 @mpib-berlin.bsky.social (June 8–16)!

This year's theme focuses on AI and decision-making — a great opportunity for early-career researchers in this space.

⏰ Application deadline: March 16

🔗 www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/research/res...

Many are appropriately outraged by Altman’s comments here implying that raising a human child is akin to “training” an AI model.

This is part of a broader pattern where AI industry leaders use language that collapses the boundary between human and machine.

🧵/

Ever wondered how your grant got cancelled? No we know. Some college dropout asked ChatGPT "is it DEI/woke"?

www.techdirt.com/202...

🎺 Call for proposals 🎺

1️⃣ replicate an existing experiment
2️⃣ run a novel experiment

on repdata.com

3️⃣ coauthor with Mary McGrath and me to meta-analyze the replications and existing studies
4️⃣ publish your study

details: alexandercoppock.com/replication_...
applications open Feb 1

please repost!

Submit a Question to The Wayfinder's "Dear Nina" Column Hi! You've made it to the submission page for The Wayfinder's monthly advice column, "Dear Nina" (think "Dear Abby" for disinformation and digital harms). Got a question about a social platform? Wonde...

This is your periodic reminder that I have a "Dear Nina" advice column where you can ask me your disinfo/digital harms questions.

Seeing your crazy uncle at a wedding?
Yoga friend fall down a conspiracy funnel?
Want to scrub your info from the internet?

I'm your gal 💁🏻‍♀️

forms.gle/P6WbpFaqMrSv...

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

I served as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme on AIs consequences for development, the report is here and spends considerable time evaluating the claim that ai will necessarily erode labor demand.

hdr.undp.org/content/huma...

Perhaps today is the day we should all learn the term “agnotology” and think about the many mechanisms of ignorance and what/whom it serves.

🌎 If we seek 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 #𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, we must strengthen public resilience to 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 #𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

👉 That's why we're pleased to share the #ClimateFactsMatter campaign by @euclimateaction.bsky.social, incl. a digital handbook co-created w/ experts from EDMO + EDMO Hubs: edmo.eu/edmo-news/cl...

This is not a drill, we need to be ready to counter and we're not.

Internet platforms must be held accountable for their actions Multiple independent research institutions have recently and repeatedly sounded the alarm that democracy is in retreat worldwide. In the United States, a British academic has painstakingly recorded mo...

The above link mangled itself through some authentication thing in my browser. Correct link is www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

There have been increasingly shrill accusations against the EU over its digital legislation, based on accusations of "censorship" by defenders of "free speech" -- including, so it appears, the right to peddle an AI app that seemingly produces child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
1/9

most importantly, in my view, we really have to understand that trump, jordan, tech bro, fellow-traveler lies about european regs are principally about (1) preserving space for propaganda/disinfo by them & far right euro allies & (2) avoiding *any* accountability or oversight.

📢 Postdoc opportunity | Consumer Behaviour & Sustainability (CBS)

🔬 The role
Experimental consumer research
Focus on sustainable food consumption, policy, & food environments

📅 Start: April 2026 (flexible)
⏳ Duration: 29 months (extendable)
🗓 Deadline: 16 Feb 2026

Feel free to share with anyone 🌱

Challenges and Solutions to Prevent Disinformation in Environmental Policy Making The event aims to raise awareness about the impact of disinformation on environmental policy and public understanding, share concrete examples of disinformation tactics across the triple planetary cri...

If you are in the Geneva area, please join us on Jan 30th for a discussion about climate disinformation that spans governments, UN, NGOs and academia. Honored to have been invited to represent the science of misinformation among other important perspectives.

Help spread the word!
tiny.cc/GEN30Jan26

Challenges and Solutions to Prevent Disinformation in Environmental Policy Making The event aims to raise awareness about the impact of disinformation on environmental policy and public understanding, share concrete examples of disinformation tactics across the triple planetary cri...

If you are in the Geneva area, please join us on Jan 30th for a discussion about climate disinformation that spans governments, UN, NGOs and academia. Honored to have been invited to represent the science of misinformation among other important perspectives.

Help spread the word!
tiny.cc/GEN30Jan26

🚨 BREAKING 🚨
The UK Govt has quietly published - without announcement - the Joint Intelligence Committee/DEFRA report it suppressed last October. They tried to sneak it out in the midst of crisis. Read and share:

“Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse & National Security.”
(link below)

🎺 On May 21/22 @lespin.bsky.social , @doriantsolak.bsky.social, and I host “Democracy at Risk? Societal Challenges, Data, and Research Infrastructures in the Age of CSS” in Vienna

Keynotes: @lauraknelson.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social

computational-social-science.org/workshops/20...

Macron:

"Faced with the brutalisation of the world, France and Europe must defend an effective multilateralism, because it serves our interests and those of all who refuse to submit to the rule of force"

Kai's write up and @cailinmeister.bsky.social's thread do a great job of summarizing our results. Rather than cover them a third time, I thought I'd clarify some misconceptions over our piece and COIS more broadly that keep cropping up scattered across replies. 🧵🧪

Industry Influence in High-Profile Social Media Research To what extent is social media research independent from industry influence? Leveraging openly available data, we show that half of the research published in top journals has disclosable ties to indus...

Who is the Big Tobacco of today?
In new work, we find 50% of high profile social media papers are connected to big tech through funding, collaboration and employment. Most connections aren't disclosed. @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @jevinwest.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com 1
arxiv.org/abs/2601.11507

Opinion | One Year of Trump. The Time to Act Is Now, While We Still Can.

The way to avoid losing freedom is to use it, says Masha Gessen: “to claim all the room there still is for speaking, writing, publishing, protesting, voting. It’s what the people of Minnesota appear to be doing, and it’s something each of us needs to do — right now, while we still can.”
#giftlink