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matthewdeverna.com
Matt DeVerna
@matthewdeverna.com
8.9K followers 790 following 170 posts
Postdoc with Stanford's Tech Impact and Policy Center
(@techimpactpolicy.bsky.social). Formerly IU / Observatory on Social Media.

Computational social science, human-AI interaction, social media, trust and safety, etc.

🧨 matthewdeverna.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
katestarbird.bsky.social
The UW Center for an Informed Public is looking for postdocs (for 2026-2028) from across diverse disciplines whose research sheds light on the challenges of our modern information environment, promotes civic health, and/or helps people/communities navigate online spaces: apply.interfolio.com/177901
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
November 24, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
techimpactpolicy.bsky.social
One week left! Submit your paper for the Journal of Online Trust & Safety’s Spring 2026 general issue. ⤵️

🗓 Key Dates

➤ Peer-reviewed research articles due: December 1, 2025
➤ Commentaries due: March 1, 2026
➤ Publication date: April 2026

👉 Submit Your Paper
bit.ly/4oi8b97

#JOTS #TrustAndSafety
November 24, 2025 at 5:25 PM
matthewdeverna.com
www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-inf...
Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Actors
A new feature on Elon Musk’s X has given deeper insight into the online “America First” movement.
www.thedailybeast.com
November 23, 2025 at 4:26 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Bunch of postdoc opportunities.

www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll...
Screenshot of text that reads as follows: 14 Postdoctoral Fellowships (2 years) Fellowship Period: between July 2026 – November 2028 Application Deadline: 9 January 2026, 11:00 AM (CET) The fellowships are available to researchers from all over the world and from any discipline represented at one if the three universities with a minimum of one year and a maximum of seven years of post-doctoral experience, who cannot conduct or continue their work in the USA appropriately because of actual political pressure. The aim is to provide time and space for their excellent research and open up international prospects for their future career. The programme offers a two-year research position at one of the three universities, preferred by the applicant, and local disciplinary cooperation, as well as support, resources, networks and exchange within the respective Institute for Advanced Studies with its international and interdisciplinary community of fellows.
November 22, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
fil.bsky.social
Don't forget our next OSoMe Awesome Speaker this Wednesday!

📅 November 12 @ 12 PM ET
Petter Törnberg, University of Amsterdam

Register at osome.iu.edu/events/speak...
November 10, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
johnholbein1.bsky.social
Is social media to blame for teens’ mental health decline?

Intuition says yes—but RCTs find only small short-term effects when users quit.

This new preprint argues these studies don’t prove social media isn’t to blame.

Here’s why: 3 reasons.
November 9, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
sohamde.in
🚨 New paper! 🔍
“Question the Questions: Auditing Representation in Online Deliberative Processes”

In deliberative polls, participants propose questions for experts but only a few make it to the panel. How representative are those chosen questions of everyone’s interests? 🧵👇
November 7, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
craigsilverman.bsky.social
For years, I’ve been obsessed with a number.

What’s the #? It’s the amount Meta earns per year from scam ads. Thanks to @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social, we know it: $16 billion.

Our free @indicator.media Briefing looks at what needs to happen now that we know the number: indicator.media/p/briefing-m...
Briefing: Meta's multi-billion dollar scam ad business
Plus: Fox News falls for racist AI slop, and a tool for investigating Discord servers.
indicator.media
November 7, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
knightgtown.bsky.social
📣 Online platforms shape what we know, how we connect, and who gets heard, yet researcher access to public platform data is shrinking, while platforms monetize this data. Our new report "Better Access" offers a framework for accessing this critical data: kgi.georgetown.edu/research-and...
November 6, 2025 at 2:58 PM
matthewdeverna.com
arxiv.org/abs/2511.02615 from @baottruong.bsky.social et al ...
Community Notes are Vulnerable to Rater Bias and Manipulation
Social media platforms increasingly rely on crowdsourced moderation systems like Community Notes to combat misinformation at scale. However, these systems face challenges from rater bias and potential...
arxiv.org
November 6, 2025 at 1:32 AM
matthewdeverna.com
👀👀
luceriluc.bsky.social Luca Luceri @luceriluc.bsky.social · 21d
🚨 New preprint 🚨
Can AI agents coordinate influence campaigns without human guidance? And how does coordination arise among AI agents? In our latest research, we simulate LLM-powered AI agents acting like users on an online platform, some benign, some running an influence operation
November 4, 2025 at 4:32 AM
matthewdeverna.com
Interested in how LLM tools are being creatively used for good?

Check out this map of LLM Tools for Public Discourse, Pluralism & Social Cohesion.

Bonus: link to a public dataset of 70+ tools is included in the first page of the report.
Report: Mapping LLM Tools for Public Discourse, Pluralism & Social Cohesion
Announcing a map produced by participants in the LLMs for Public Discourse convening
www.prosocialdesign.org
October 30, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
lfoswaldo.bsky.social
We have a new preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...

What have we learned about social media - the constantly moving target of empirical research - over the past decade?
October 30, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
brendannyhan.bsky.social
Unprecedented corruption. Everyone gets a taste.
October 25, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
tedunderwood.com
Are Large Language Models Sensitive to the Motives Behind Communication? (Basically yes, although reasoning models underperform, and all of them struggle with online ads in a naturalistic setting.)
arxiv.org/abs/2510.19687
Abstract Human communication is motivated: people speak, write, and create content with a particular communicative intent in mind. As a result, information that large language models (LLMs) and Al agents process is inherently framed by humans' intentions and incentives. People are adept at navigating such nuanced information: we routinely identify benevolent or self-serving motives in order to decide what statements to trust. For LLMs to be effective in the real world, they too must critically evaluate content by factoring in the motivations of the source—for instance, weighing the credibility of claims made in a sales pitch. In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive study of whether LLMs have this capacity for motivational vigilance. We first employ controlled experiments from cognitive science to verify that LLMs' behavior is consistent with rational models of learning from motivated testimony, and find they successfully discount information from biased sources in a human-like manner. We then extend our evaluation to sponsored online adverts, a more naturalistic reflection of LLM agents' information ecosystems. In these settings, we find that LLMs' inferences do not track the rational models' predictions nearly as closely— partly due to additional information that distracts them from vigilance-relevant considerations. However, a simple steering intervention that boosts the salience of intentions and incentives substantially increases the correspondence between LLMs and the rational model. These results suggest that LLMs possess a basic sensitivity to the motivations of others, but generalizing to novel real-world settings will require further improvements to these models.
October 24, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
techimpactpolicy.bsky.social
One week left!

Submit your abstract for the #JOTS special issue on Digital Intersectionality and Marginalization in the #MajorityWorld.

🗓️ Deadline: October 31, 2025
🔗 Learn more: bit.ly/4mZDjtb

#TrustAndSafety
October 24, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
katestarbird.bsky.social
Our team presented five papers at the CSCW (computer supported cooperative work and social computing) conference this week in Bergen, Norway. (CSCW is an ACM conference and a “home conference” for my team.) I’m going to share a few highlights in a thread here.
October 22, 2025 at 11:16 AM
matthewdeverna.com
October 15, 2025 at 9:34 PM
matthewdeverna.com
arxiv.org/abs/2510.07226
Machines in the Crowd? Measuring the Footprint of Machine-Generated Text on Reddit
Generative Artificial Intelligence is reshaping online communication by enabling large-scale production of Machine-Generated Text (MGT) at low cost. While its presence is rapidly growing across the We...
arxiv.org
October 9, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
nerdsitu.bsky.social
Three new NERDS publications: Polarization, image-to-text-mapping, and candidate recommendation
nerds.itu.dk/2025/09/30/t...
A memes present in a dataset of a paper. This type of image shows a high level of cultural complexity that cannot be fully interpreted by simply looking at the objects represented in the picture.
September 30, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
techimpactpolicy.bsky.social
“Wait, what is this exactly?” 🤔

New in @hbr.org, Director Jeff Hancock, PhD candidate Angela Lee, and co-authors from BetterUp Labs discuss the surge in AI-generated "workslop" and its implications for today's workers and business leaders.

#workslop #AI
AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity
Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...
hbr.org
September 23, 2025 at 9:16 PM
matthewdeverna.com
One week to the Trust and Safety Research Conference!

Stoked to see you there and for the amazing program!

@stanfordcyber.bsky.social
Trust and Safety Research Conference 2025
cyber.fsi.stanford.edu
September 18, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
jugander.bsky.social
📣 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...
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...
yalefds.swoogo.com
September 12, 2025 at 12:28 PM
Reposted by Matt DeVerna
techimpactpolicy.bsky.social
The agenda for the Trust and Safety Research Conference is out now. Two days of lightning talks, presentations, networking and more, with @dwillner.bsky.social‬ as keynote. Join us!

For the full line-up and times, plus link to register, visit:

cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/content/trus...
August 20, 2025 at 6:46 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Looking forward to moderating the 💥 AI and Algorithm Auditing 💥 session in just a few weeks at the Trust and Safety Research Conference at Stanford!!

🎟️ Last chance to register! sto.stanfordtickets.org/the-2025-tru...

#TSRConf
@stanfordcyber.bsky.social
August 26, 2025 at 6:25 PM