Alice Marwick | Lightnews

alice e marwick

@alicetiara.bsky.social

13K followers 470 following 370 posts

Dir of Research, Data & Society. Academic. Studies tech & society, far-right disinfo. UNC CITAP. Loves pop cult. Mom, fashion victim, sci fi/fantasy enthusiast. Author of The Private is Political, Status Update. NYC forever. She/her/femme 💅🏻 tiara.org .. more

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Alice E. Marwick is a communication scholar, academic, and author, who currently works as an Associate Professor in the Communication department and Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an affiliated researcher with the Data and Society Research Institute. Marwick has written for publications such as the New York Times, and the Guardian. Her works include the examination of politics, race, social media and gender. She has been a keynote speaker for various universities throughout the United States. .. more

Communication & Media Studies 35%

Sociology 19%

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alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · Dec 4

Wrote a big hot take for Nieman’s 2025 predictions & managed to shoehorn in a lot of pet peeves while using “epistemic” sparingly www.niemanlab.org/2024/12/the-...

The mainstream media will lose its last grip on relevancy

"The gap between mainstream media readers, people who get most of their news through influencers or partisan social media, and people who barely think about news at all will create a fundamental schis...

www.niemanlab.org

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 3d

Right?! The portrayal of black women in OBAO was so fucking weird, and it was the most shallow depiction of leftist activism - incredible to me that people take this movie seriously as political critique. It’s a family drama

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 6d

Years ago I wrote a paper on "the fappening" (celeb nude photo leaks) and young men's sense of entitlement to women's nude bodies. The slogan "AI Girls Never Say No" is beyond disgusting and tells us a lot about how this user base views women: as goods, trophies, possessions, not people

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 6d

This is one of the worst, most horrifying exposures we have ever seen. It is hard to overstate how bad the things that people are using tools like for are, and it's insane to pretend like these tools are anything other than nonconsensual porn machines

www.404media.co/ai-porn-secr...

Massive Leak Shows Erotic Chatbot Users Turned Women’s Yearbook Pictures Into AI Porn

Chatbot roleplay and image generator platform SecretDesires.ai left cloud storage containers of nearly two million of images and videos exposed, including photos and full names of women from social me...

www.404media.co

Reposted by Michael Veale, Michael D. McDonald, Alice Marwick , and 1 more Michael Veale, Michael D. McDonald, Alice Marwick, Aleksandra Urman

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 6d

Massive Leak Shows Erotic Chatbot Users Turned Women’s Yearbook Pictures Into AI Porn

www.404media.co

Reposted by Alice Marwick

Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 6d

In a new piece for @policyr.bsky.social, @alicetiara.bsky.social, @serena124.bsky.social, @charleyjohnson.bsky.social, and @erie.bsky.social explore the challenges of bridging empirical research and policy, and outline what’s needed to do it well. policyreview.info/articles/ana...

Troubling translation: Sociotechnical research in AI policy and governance

The common call for researchers to simply “translate” sociotechnical insights into policy overlooks the complex dynamics of policymaking. Using two case studies, the article shows how meaningful relat...

policyreview.info

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 8d

The prompts are in this report: publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/u... and they are even worse than whatever you're imagining. No, I don't want a stuffie explaining kink, spanking, and role-play to my five year old, JFC

Reposted by Alice Marwick

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 8d

Authorities have launched a transnational crackdown on scam compounds in Southeast Asia, but it's leaving survivors with incomplete support, writes Laura Scherling.

As Authorities Crack Down on Scam Compounds, Victims Are Getting Left Behind | TechPolicy.Press

Survivors are concerned law enforcement isn't doing everything they can to fight scam compounds and the cartels that run them, Laura Scherling writes.

www.techpolicy.press

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 8d

Oops @weisenthal.bsky.social

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 8d

Joe @thestalwart is a friend and I've been enjoying watching him make his way through the media studies canon! He read Walter Ong over the summer and loved it.

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 11d

All parents and kids should be talking to administrators and school boards about how their districts are implementing AI. Require transparency, privacy, limits, and guardrails IF it’s allowed at all. Push back against big tech trying to sell harmful chatbots to your children.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 11d

Some people are replying here with things already addressed in this thread and paper, so please click through bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 11d

Continues to blow my mind how this concept has become common vernacular

Reposted by Fabián Muniesa

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 11d

New in @theverge.com - half of US scams originate on a Meta property. The company must do more. @lanalanalana.bsky.social and I weigh in www.theverge.com/tech/820906/...

Meta must rein in scammers — or face consequences

Scams are ruinous to users — but, reportedly, big business to Meta.

www.theverge.com

Reposted by Alice Marwick

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 11d

Some people are replying here with things already addressed in this thread and paper, so please click through bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Reposted by Marc Lynch, Paul Goldstein, Bonnie Honig , and 2 more Marc Lynch, Paul Goldstein, Bonnie Honig, Jason Lyall, Alice Marwick

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 18d

There had better be trials. And not just for the low-level thugs carrying out these orders, but for everyone up the chain of command.

If we get past this, the solution isn’t to pretend it never happened and invite Stephen Miller to Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

It’s trials w real punishments.

Lynda Lopez @lyndab08.bsky.social · 18d

A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 19d

When people ask me how we can stop online scams, I point to THIS

Jeff Horwitz @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social · 19d

Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from showing Faceboon and Instagram users 15 billion “higher legal risk” scam ad impressions a day, internal documents state.

That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators
To fine it for running scam ads.

www.reuters.com/investigatio...

www.reuters.com

Reposted by Alice Marwick

Whitney Curry Wimbish @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social · 19d

Very exciting to see activists launching a new nonprofit today to keep building on the community of volunteers that came together to get Mamdani elected.

Our Time is a 501(c)(4) and plans to start events in December.

Our Time

A campaign for an affordable NYC

ourtime.nyc

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Leigh Sparks, Cathy N. Davidson , and 8 more Brendan Nyhan, Leigh Sparks, Cathy N. Davidson, Magnus Johansson, Devon Greyson, Cynthia Miller‐Idriss, Woodrow Hartzog, Greg Linden, Alice Marwick, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elise Thomas

Jeff Horwitz @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social · 19d

www.reuters.com

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 20d

Genuine question: who is advising Mamdani on tech, surveillance, AI, etc?

Reposted by Alice Marwick

Fight for the Future @fightforthefuture.org · 20d

So what can you do? 🤔

1. Continue pressuring your lawmakers, let them know how unpopular and dangerous censorship and surveillance bills are.

2. Spread the word! Many people have no idea the internet they know and love is under threat.

🗣️ 👉https://www.badinternetbills.com/#online-id-checks

A webpage section titled "The Bills" lists and briefly describes eight proposed bills related to internet regulation and privacy in colored boxes.

Reposted by Will Jennings, Steve Peers, Cathy N. Davidson , and 7 more Will Jennings, Steve Peers, Cathy N. Davidson, David S. Cohen, Trevon D. Logan, Silvia Secchi, Michael Jones‐Correa, Alfie Kohn, Alice Marwick, David Darmofal

Matthew Haugen @mjhaugen.bsky.social · 20d

Wow it turns out the entire country is not permanently reactionary because Trump won an election by 1.5%

Reposted by Will Jennings, Julie Leask, Justin H. Kirkland , and 1 more Will Jennings, Julie Leask, Justin H. Kirkland, Alice Marwick

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 21d

Engagement-based #algorithms amplify intergroup hostility + moral-emotional content, leading it to be overrepresented in your feed

This leads us to falsely perceive that people want to see this kind of content and share more of it.

This technology fuels false polarization: osf.io/preprints/os...

Reposted by Rebecca Tushnet, Alice Marwick

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 23d

There are a large number of Democratic politicians who insist that Jonathan Haidt is a reliable narrator and one who they should take their legislative cues from. They should be asked why they're supporting someone the Heritage Foundation is cheering on in their efforts to censor the internet.

Tweet from Heritage Foundation's boss Kevin Roberts:

Thank you, Jonathan Haidt, for reminding everyone Heritage
yesterday that tech tycoons like Leonid Radvinsky and Solomon Friedman are profiting to the tune of millions by preying on America's young men and women.

We are proud to be in this fight with you. It is time to arrest, prosecute, and convict the sick perverts behind OnlyFans and PornHub.

Reposted by Michael Zimmer

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 27d

Read more from my fantastic team at D&S studying how people use general purpose LLMs for mental health and emotional support, including a new Big Data & Society paper:

Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · Oct 21

“The perennial availability of AI is rapidly reshaping our expectations of care,” @briana-v.bsky.social and Ranjit Singh write in a new blog post about this piece. “Care is not mere output. It lives in the slow, difficult work of attunement, which no machine can truly provide.”

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 27d

And it's Open Access! Read it here: link.springer.com/article/10.1... and thanks to the editors, reviewers, and my wonderful collaborators for making this such a fun and relatively painless process.

A chatbot for the soul: mental health care, privacy, and intimacy in AI-based conversational agents - Communication and Change

Artificial intelligence-based conversational agents—chatbots—are increasingly integrated into telehealth platforms, employee wellness programs, and mobile applications to address structural gaps in me...

link.springer.com

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 27d

Moreover, both conventional impact assessments *and* human-AI research often ignore the larger regulatory, economic, and political landscape in which AI chatbots & users exist. Understanding context and working with impacted communities is crucial to understand both immediate & downstream effects.

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 27d

However, while therapeutic conversations are governed by privacy laws, wellness chatbots are not. We call for regulation on both therapeutic and general-purpose chatbots that takes into account that people use chatbots for mental health guidance even when that is not their intended purpose.

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 27d

The paper draws from participatory algorithmic impact assessments- focus groups with impacted users- to surface their concerns. Wellness/psychic chatbots can encourage users to share very personal information, and their recommendations may feel revelatory or even divine.

Reposted by Tama Leaver

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 27d

🚨NEW PAPER ALERT 🚨 @tamigraph.bsky.social @briana-v.bsky.social and I discuss wellness chatbots, their labor implications, & "private vibes" vs "privacy". We call for critical human-AI communication scholarship that takes into account context & political economy: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A chatbot for the soul: mental health care, privacy, and intimacy in AI-based conversational agents - Communication and Change

link.springer.com

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 28d

Since moving to civil society, I've noticed a huge dearth of support for researchers working in the space - although there are tons of us! Come join this D&SxACLUxCDT event where we talk about the opportunities and challenges of research to support tech policy & advocacy!

Dhanaraj Thakur @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social · 29d

Advocating with Evidence: Lessons for Tech Researchers in Civil Society.
Join us on November 13 for an online discussion featuring @alicetiara.bsky.social @mkgerchick.bsky.social @jordanaut.bsky.social and me.

Organized by @cdt.org @datasociety.bsky.social @aclu.org

cdt.org/event/advoca...

Advocating with Evidence: Lessons for Tech Researchers in Civil Society

November 13, 2025, 10-11am ET online

Civil society is struggling to address how technology and the tech industry contribute to eroding democracy, amplifying bias, and accelerating hateful ideologies. Timely, accessible findings are necessary to inform policy and advocacy, but it can be challenging to produce research that is simultaneously rigorous and high-impact.

This panel brings together research experts and practitioners who bridge policy and academia to advance civil rights and challenge tech injustice. Drawing on their experience as research leaders, the panelists will discuss how to conduct effective research on the harms of digital technologies and for developing solutions that center marginalized and vulnerable communities.

Reposted by Alice Marwick

Dhanaraj Thakur @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social · 29d

alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · Oct 24

KOSA KEEPS RISING FROM THE DEAD - DON'T LET THIS ZOMBIE BILL SUCCEED. It would implement widespread age verification across all 50 states and censor queer/reproductive content!

Fight for the Future @fightforthefuture.org · Oct 24

🚨‼️As of yesterday KOSA is at 64 cosponsors with @vanhollen.senate.gov + @kim.senate.gov - who claim to support LGTBQ+ rights but are clearly okay with supporting legislation that’ll censor us off the internet- newly signed on.

You know what to do: www.stopkosa.com

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