Nathalie Van Raemdonck
nathalievanraemdonck.com
Nathalie Van Raemdonck
@nathalievanraemdonck.com
Social media networks and social norms, freshly minted PhD from Brussels University (VUB). Belgian living in Barcelona, internet night crawler, STS
Pinned
I became a Doctor yesterday 🥳 presented my thesis "What Others afford: sociotechnical shaping of normative processes on social media platforms". In it I describe how the way we all shape each other's behavior on social media is shaped by the architectures of the digital environments we inhabit.
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
I haven't read the leaked 183-page Commission Decision against X, but I am reading the House Judiciary Committee's X posts about it and the worst stuff they could find is... preposterously weak.

judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

x.com/JudiciaryGOP...
x.com
January 29, 2026 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
A reminder that one of the new owners of TikTok is Larry Ellison who also now owns CBS News…
I know it's hard to track all the threats to democracy out there right now, but this is at the top of the list.
January 26, 2026 at 4:16 AM
3am, best time to change my bio here from "PhD student" to "freshly minted PhD" since that still hadn't properly sunk in... I may be slightly burnt-out from having worked on projects all the way through and after my defense to financially survive 🥹 but a few days in the mountains definitely helped!
January 24, 2026 at 12:16 AM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
To that end, I've teamed up with my friend @j12t.org, who runs @fediforum.org to put together an online "un-workshop" to explore different ways of growing the open social web! fediforum.org/2026-03-grow...
FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web:<br>An Online FediForum Un-Workshop
fediforum.org
January 23, 2026 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
BREAKING: Now that TikTok is under US-based ownership, the social media app potentially collects more detailed information about its users, including precise location data.

My latest for @wired.com:

www.wired.com/story/tiktok...
TikTok Is Now Collecting Even More Data About Its Users. Here Are the 3 Biggest Changes
According to its new privacy policy, TikTok now collects more data on its users, including their precise location, after majority ownership officially switched to a group based in the US.
www.wired.com
January 23, 2026 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Good read. A submission to the European Commission's call for evidence on Towards European Open Digital Ecosystems (importance of OSS for EU tech sovereignty, security and competitiveness). It ends with:
> If you work in OSS, consider adding your voice. The feedback period ends February 3, 2026.
> When governments buy Open Source services, the money rarely reaches the people who actually build and maintain it. Procurement rules favor large system integrators, not the maintainers of the software itself.
Funding Open Source for Digital Sovereignty
Open Source alone won't deliver digital sovereignty. Europe must fix procurement and fund those who actually build it.
dri.es
January 21, 2026 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
It's also *deliberately* disingenuous because we did explain AT and Eurosky at great length to their primary funder.

If I were launching a social media about truth and verification I'd, like, try not to lie but that's just me.

Anyway, some of us have work to do.
ATProto/ActivityPub rivalry notwithstanding, omfg if I were Mastodon today I'd be so angry at this
January 21, 2026 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Why do tech billionaires want server farms in orbit? So that they don't have to deal with communities trying to defend their energy grids, water supplies and well being: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno...
Why tech billionaires dream of servers in the sky
Behind the hopes for artificial general intelligence is the desire for a world without obligations to governments, workers or fellow citizens
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
📃🚌 We have just published version 2.0 of our report on the #DigitalOmnibus, now including recommendations for EU legislators on each of the most important articles, including whether the proposed changes should be rejected or retained.

Read more here 👉 noyb.eu/en/digital-o...
Digital Omnibus Report V2: Analysis of Select GDPR and ePrivacy Proposals by the Commission
Version 2 of our report includes specific recommendations for the EU legislator on each of the most important articles, including on whether to reject or maintain proposed changes
noyb.eu
January 20, 2026 at 2:16 PM
This whole Greenland situation is truly insane, but I made a bet with a friend almost exactly one year ago that Trump would really try to take Greenland, and the prospect of my friend having to make a speech in a full beerhall that he was ignorant about Trump's insanity somehow helps me cope?
Trump is basically putting tariffs on Denmark and its allies for deploying troops on Danish territory
January 20, 2026 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Can't hit the repost button often enough on that one.

Great takedown of his _Anxious Generation_ airport book in none other than Nature, BTW:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Banning social media for kids may be good or bad but that guy is a comically obvious bullshit artist with entire books full of trite lessons extrapolated from anecdotes that are themselves barely half-true.
January 14, 2026 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
German bundestag all getting verified today
January 11, 2026 at 4:05 AM
Belgium will participate in Eurovision.
So disappointing. @rtbf.be fails to see that its platform is being weaponized by the state of Israel to maintain the impression that the country holds a large support for its genocide and occupation by the European population. www.rtbf.be/article/euro...
Eurovision : la RTBF a tranché et elle participera - RTBF Actus
La Belgique participera donc au concours de l’Eurovision. Une décision attendue puisque, pour rappel, il revenait à...
www.rtbf.be
December 5, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
This explains something that has always mystified me about drivers who rail against bike lanes and transit. Why WOULDN'T you want people to have options not to drive? It would make your own driving better! But they don't just want good traffic, they want to reinforce the NORM of driving
This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥
December 1, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
HELP WANTED: We need a remote / hybrid experience lead for #ATmosphereConf

Leave a comment in the forum and/or DM me discourse.atprotocol.community/t/atmosphere...

FAQ entry discourse.atprotocol.community/t/atmosphere...
November 27, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
And now AI slop is taking a serious bite out of SocArXiv.

Thread:
In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps:
/1
November 27, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Citarella noted that he’s been warning, for more than half a decade, that too many people remain under the mistaken impression that “what happens on the internet isn’t real.” www.newyorker.com/culture/podc...
The Leftist Podcaster Who Studies Online Radicalization
Joshua Citarella sees his YouTube show “Doomscroll” as a “tactical media experiment” to funnel young internet users toward esoteric left-wing ideas.
www.newyorker.com
November 27, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
tl;dr: Bluesky began with genuine promise: a new social media platform where users could feel safer, but inconsistent moderation quickly eroded trust.

When systemically marginalized users pushed back, Bluesky’s leadership minimized concerns and began to target them for bans.
Bluesky’s CEO meltdown: How leadership continues to fail its most marginalized users
tl;dr: Bluesky began with genuine promise: a new social media platform where systemically marginalized users could feel safer, but…
plutopsyche.medium.com
October 6, 2025 at 4:54 PM
These companies truly belong in hell.... internal documents showed META calculated that regulatory fines would be smaller than revenue from scam ads, so they just... keep running them at a higher price. www.reuters.com/investigatio...
Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show
Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, and it internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day, company documents show.
www.reuters.com
November 20, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
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
November 19, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
When you recreate Twitter, you shouldn't be surprised that you've recreated Twitter.

Boggles my mind that Bluesky's leadership seems to have done very little forward thinking about these issues.
Bluesky announces moderation changes focused on better tracking, improved transparency — TechCrunch
Bluesky is making moderation changes, including the addition of new reporting categories, strikes, and more clarity when communicating with users about violations.
apple.news
November 19, 2025 at 6:46 PM
I became a Doctor yesterday 🥳 presented my thesis "What Others afford: sociotechnical shaping of normative processes on social media platforms". In it I describe how the way we all shape each other's behavior on social media is shaped by the architectures of the digital environments we inhabit.
November 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
A staggering statistic: "North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year." What are we doing?
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
November 12, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
"Conversations about “internet sovereignty” should not mistakenly assume that the exercise of sovereign state power over corporations will necessarily translate into greater agency for its people", @prateekwaghre.com writes www.techpolicy.press/indias-searc...
India’s Search for Digital Sovereignty | TechPolicy.Press
Prateek Waghre discusses India’s push for tech sovereignty amid volatile US ties, digital dependence, and global shifts in trade.
www.techpolicy.press
November 11, 2025 at 8:51 AM
Reposted by Nathalie Van Raemdonck
Flipped this on earlier and holy god do some of you post a lot

bsky.app/profile/stec...
bsky.app
November 2, 2025 at 2:50 AM