Bao Truong

🚨 New working paper 🚨

Can LLMs with reasoning + web search reliably fact-check political claims?

We evaluated 15 models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and DeepSeek on 6,000+ PolitiFact claims (2007–2024).

Short answer: Not reliably—unless you give them curated evidence.

arxiv.org/abs/2511.18749

We’re recruiting PhD students at @uvadatascience.bsky.social, and I’m looking for students to join our group (Y Lab) next year!

My group works at the intersection of network science, machine learning, and interpretable AI.

yyahn.com/ylab/

Apply here! datascience.virginia.edu/degrees/phd

Please repost to get the word out! @nkgarg.bsky.social and I are excited to present a personalized feed for academics! It shows posts about papers from accounts you’re following bsky.app/profile/pape...

Thanks for sharing!

Ready for #ICWSM2026 in LA next May? 🌴

📅 Deadlines:
• Jan 15, 2026 – Full papers, posters, demos, datasets, tutorials (note: posters/demos/datasets submitted in Sep 2025 are reviewed only after this deadline)
• Jan 30, 2026 – Workshop proposals

🔗 Details: www.icwsm.org/2026/submit....

Find out how we spot constructive conflicts and uncover their language patterns, along with other key insights here 👇

We find that a post doesn't need to be toxic to attract toxic comments ☢️ Our Reddit data shows that 47% of non-toxic submissions still attract at least one toxic reply, while only 6% of toxic submissions do. The initial post's content, therefore, is a poor predictor of a comment section's health.

A simple solution, prioritizing only “the feel-good" content, is flawed, as it avoids important societal topics that are inherently negative and can devolve into toxic debates. After all, how often does thinking about wars, viruses, or economic policy put a smile on your face?

Modern social media is divisive, partly due to recommender algorithms that promote emotionally charged, negative content at the expense of thoughtful discourse. Researchers are exploring prosocial recommenders that foster positive outcomes, aiming for users to feel connected rather than angry 💡

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...

Today (w/ @ox.ac.uk @stanford @MIT @LSE) we’re sharing the results of the largest AI persuasion experiments to date: 76k participants, 19  LLMs, 707 political issues.

We examine “levers” of AI persuasion: model scale, post-training, prompting, personalization, & more! 

🧵:

If you're @ic2s2.bsky.social #IC2S2 and are looking for a faculty position, get in touch. @uni-saarland.de is hiring.
Right now, there's an open call in Computer Science @saarland-informatics-campus.de: www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/up...
Soon, there'll be open calls in the Social Sciences.

screenshot of the group website https://css-synosys.github.io/

Our team "Computational Social Science" at SynoSys is growing! Welcome @baottruong.bsky.social and Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez!

At the moment, they are all @ic2s2.bsky.social, say hi get to know their research.

And check out our website: css-synosys.github.io

The Effects of Outgroup Agreement and Ingroup Dissent on Political Polarization
📍 Talk | Jul 24, 11:00 AM | Troselli

Scaling of Community Rules Across Mastodon Servers
📍 Talk | Jul 24, 11:00 AM | Vingen 3+4
#ic2s2

In Norrköping for #IC2S2!
Excited to share three work with my amazing collaborators @dowonkim.bsky.social , @ozgurcanseckin.bsky.social, and @rasikamurali.bsky.social — come say hi!

🧵 Where to find us:
Predicting Constructive Conflict in Online Discussions
📍 Poster | Jul 23, 1:30 PM | Atrium

New preprint! 🚀 We looked into the rise of Bluesky and found that this platform is definitely sticking around 🚀
Huge kudos to my amazing co-authors for digging through nearly two years of all Bluesky data!