Farnaz Jahanbakhsh

Our new CHI paper raises two connected ideas:
(1) we can’t—and shouldn’t expect to—agree on all accounts of harm, which makes universal moderation inherently limited; and
(2) instead of suppressing the content that harms a given user, we can transform it in a personalized way to preserve its value.

02.02.2026 04:22 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1

screenshot of the title and authors of the Science paper that are linked in the next post

Our new article in @science.org enables social media reranking outside of platforms' walled gardens.

We add an LLM-powered reranking of highly polarizing political content into N=1256 participants' feeds. Downranking cools tensions with the opposite party—but upranking inflames them.

01.12.2025 19:33 — 👍 46    🔁 13    💬 1    📌 2

New Directions in Social Algorithms Research on October 16-17, 2025 at Yale University As social media algorithms increasingly mediate social experiences, there has been a rapid increase in research on the effects of how these algorithms are configured, alternatives to engagement-centri...

📣 Yale workshop, Oct 16-17! 📣 How could/should content ranking work? What's new in content moderation? How can platforms promote civility? Hosted by Yale's Institute for Foundations of Data Science (FDS). Great speakers! Submit posters by 9/22! Spread the word! yalefds.swoogo.com/socialalgori...

12.09.2025 12:28 — 👍 27    🔁 15    💬 2    📌 3

Graduate Admissions | Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan

📢📢I'm recruiting PhD students for Fall 2025 to join my research lab at the University of Michigan!

Interested in doing research in social computing systems? Consider applying! 📢📢

Application deadline: Dec 15
cse.engin.umich.edu/academics/gr...

10.12.2024 02:06 — 👍 12    🔁 6    💬 0    📌 0

New paper: Do social media algorithms shape affective polarization?

We ran a field experiment on X/Twitter (N=1,256) using LLMs to rerank content in real-time, adjusting exposure to polarizing posts. Result: Algorithmic ranking impacts feelings toward the political outgroup! 🧵⬇️

25.11.2024 20:32 — 👍 808    🔁 214    💬 32    📌 52

New tool empowers users to fight online misinformation In an effort to decentralize the fight against online misinformation, MIT researchers developed the Trustnet browser extension, which empowers individuals to assess the accuracy of any content on any ...

My work was featured in the MIT News today!

Read more on empowering users to assess the accuracy of content and see assessments from their trusted sources everywhere on the web:
news.mit.edu/2024/new-too...

16.05.2024 19:37 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

It is unrealistic to expect that every website on the web, some the very perpetrators of misinformation, offer misinformation moderation and in a fair and rigorous way. And here’s where our CHI'24 paper comes to the rescue.

20.03.2024 06:42 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

It gives any user the power to assess content accuracy & specify whose assessment they trust. Of course platforms are unlikely to change their design so drastically, not w/o push from the outside. What’s more, people encounter (mis)information anywhere on the web, not just on social platforms.

20.03.2024 06:42 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I’ve been advocating for decentralizing the power to moderate misinformation. We had a paper at #CSCW22 (dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...) where we showed how a platform can do that. There, I built a social media platform that resembles any other, except for 2 major differences:

20.03.2024 06:41 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

🚨 Paper alert!🚨
We show how enabling users to moderate misinformation can be deployed everywhere on the web, in a platform-agnostic manner and without support from the social platforms or individual web sites arxiv.org/pdf/2403.114...
#CHI24

With @karger.bsky.social
🧵

20.03.2024 06:40 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0