Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 1d

No time to read the long version of our new @reutersinstitute.bsky.social research on use & views around GenAI, information, and news in 6 countries? Then read the summary, just out with @niemanlab.org.

www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/peop...

People are using ChatGPT twice as much as they were last year. They’re still just as skeptical of AI in news.

"For news organizations, our findings are in some ways bitter medicine."

www.niemanlab.org

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Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · 5d

My article "Data is not available upon request" was published in Meta-Psychology. Very happy to see this out!
open.lnu.se/index.php/me...

LnuOpen | Meta-Psychology

open.lnu.se

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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 8d

Had missed this absolutely brilliant paper. They take a widely used social media addiction scale & replace 'social media' with 'friends'. The resulting scale has great psychometric properties & 69% of people have friend addictions.

link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Development of an Offline-Friend Addiction Questionnaire (O-FAQ): Are most people really social addicts? - Behavior Research Methods

A growing number of self-report measures aim to define interactions with social media in a pathological behavior framework, often using terminology focused on identifying those who are ‘addicted’ to engaging with others online. Specifically, measures of ‘social media addiction’ focus on motivations for online social information seeking, which could relate to motivations for offline social information seeking. However, it could be the case that these same measures could reveal a pattern of friend addiction in general. This study develops the Offline-Friend Addiction Questionnaire (O-FAQ) by re-wording items from highly cited pathological social media use scales to reflect “spending time with friends”. Our methodology for validation follows the current literature precedent in the development of social media ‘addiction’ scales. The O-FAQ had a three-factor solution in an exploratory sample of N = 807 and these factors were stable in a 4-week retest (r = .72 to .86) and was validated against personality traits, and risk-taking behavior, in conceptually plausible directions. Using the same polythetic classification techniques as pathological social media use studies, we were able to classify 69% of our sample as addicted to spending time with their friends. The discussion of our satirical research is a critical reflection on the role of measurement and human sociality in social media research. We question the extent to which connecting with others can be considered an ‘addiction’ and discuss issues concerning the validation of new ‘addiction’ measures without relevant medical constructs. Readers should approach our measure with a level of skepticism that should be afforded to current social media addiction measures.

link.springer.com

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 13d

🧪Science has saved many lives!

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer: Estimated 2.3 billion lives saved
Blood groups/storage leading to blood transfusions: 1.1 billion
High yield wheat: 245 million
Penicillin: 203M
Insulin: 200M
Chlorinated water: 177M
ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

Chart listing scientists whose work saved many people’s lives. The estimates are taken from the web publication Science Heroes.

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Tobias Dienlin @tobiasdienlin.com · 13d

While I agree with many points, I believe it overemphasizes deductive research. Inductive research, description, measurement of effects, is all crucial to have a basis upon which to build explanations of effects. I believe induction is strongly underappreciated in current Comm.

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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 15d

More on the decline and fall of Steven Levitt
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/24/m...

More on the decline and fall of Steven Levitt | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

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SAM Retro @retroman.bsky.social · 21d

BattleTech (1994)
#MegaDrive
#Genesis

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Andy Robertson 🔜 London ComicCon @geekdadgamer.bsky.social · 21d

Working through this excellent podcast from @shuhbillskee.bsky.social and @peteetchells.bsky.social. What a brilliant resource that's plotting a fresh way forward. If you have parents who follow you, do share! screensensepodcast.substack.com

Screen Sense: Parenting in a Digital World | Pete Etchells | Substack

A podcast for parents trying to make thoughtful, informed decisions about tech and childhood. Click to read Screen Sense: Parenting in a Digital World, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscrib...

screensensepodcast.substack.com

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · 27d

This is such a great initiative that scaffolds the *GULF* between families who want to play and quality gaming experiences.

Andy Robertson 🔜 London ComicCon @geekdadgamer.bsky.social · Sep 8

Celebrate with us! Our biggest @officialpax.bsky.social Family Gaming Room:
🕹️ 100s PS5/Xbox/Switch games
♿ Accessible Tech from Respawn
🔥 Games from @wholesomegames.com
🎯 Parental controls and @esrb.org explainer sessions
✏️ So many Guestbook comments

www.familygamingdatabase.com/search/list/...

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becca laurie @imbeccable.bsky.social · 28d

if you thought captchas couldn’t possibly become worse, i have upsetting news for you

a captcha with that says “drag the pipe to fix fhe water pipes from the tank to the faucet”

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Andy Robertson 🔜 London ComicCon @geekdadgamer.bsky.social · Sep 8

Celebrate with us! Our biggest @officialpax.bsky.social Family Gaming Room:
🕹️ 100s PS5/Xbox/Switch games
♿ Accessible Tech from Respawn
🔥 Games from @wholesomegames.com
🎯 Parental controls and @esrb.org explainer sessions
✏️ So many Guestbook comments

www.familygamingdatabase.com/search/list/...

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Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · Sep 4

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is BACK! New episode: The Haidt of Hypocrisy: podcast.ctrlaltspeech.com/2315966/epis...

This week, we talk a lot about experts, complexity, and nuance. And how the political and media classes... seem to want to ignore all three in favor of clear, simple, & wrong.

The Haidt of Hypocrisy - Ctrl-Alt-Speech

In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:Jordan escalates global tech argument, with Farage's help (Politico) Fa...

podcast.ctrlaltspeech.com

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

But before then, before things get very loud, and very exciting, I think it's nice to just take a breath and reflect on what a nice little time this is. Before things start to get very interesting. 🙂

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

This will further empty the other platforms of their diehards and influencers. So many new opportunities to cater to niches and communities. You won't need hundreds of millions to set up a new platform, just some AI credits and you can vibe code your own little empire onto AT. All welcome.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

There is going to be an acceleration of tool building on top of AT that takes power directly from the hands of the Bluesky board and investors and allocates it to end users. These are going to be wild. As Bluesky becomes more popular its users will have more resources to be less dependent on it.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

We are going to see an amazing series of real time experiments in content moderation, social ties, and modes of argument and conversation that haven't been seen since August 1992. People are going to realize that the folk behind Bluesky gave all of us admin access to our own social media servers

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

I'm less optimistic re the 9% and 1% who are essentially playing to the home team wrt "the great social media front" in the American culture war. They'll be back in 2017 and they're gonna try to drag us and normie feed users into that era. But as time goes on, I think we're going to see cool stuff

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

But it is going to take a while for the different slices of the Bluesky user base to get used to this. I think the 90% browsing folks will work out subscribing, customizing, and syndicating feeds that are low negative vibes, dipping into the drama a bit.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

We also are not stuck on a platform with all those passionate folks who still log onto X everyday with their morning cuppa who crosspost on Bluesky. We don't need to complain to Bluesky to change their policies, we can set and agree our own feeds, filters, and ways of handling our data.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

We'd be stuck on their platform like we were for the last 0 to 10 times this has happened to your favourite internet spot. But here is where what is under the hood. Bluesky isn't a motto, mission statement, or a person, it's a protocol. By design they cannot keep us as cattle

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

In other words, they'd need to raise a ludicrous (and unpredictable amount) of money or have a plan to make a this unknowably huge amount money to keep payroll and keep old backers happy. Ads, user data... no ads subscription.. shoot! Well, some of this would happen, but they'd have all of us (🤑)

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

Here is what would happen if Bluesky was a platform made by good people (tm)... It would start losing money very quickly. Its success would be it would have higher expenses and a limited stack of investor cash to pay moderators, contractors, AI tokens, to keep everything civil, legal, non-shitty.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

And this is where if Bluesky was any other plucky startup with big dreams and ideals would start to die. Its heart could be plucked out. As these new users come in, they need to be moderated, I mean, wtaf were these people probably posting/liking since you quit twitter after the third nazi thing?

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

Every time one of these other platforms screw up and Bluesky stays stable and provides value they'll hemorrhage out the the 9% of mid engagement and 1% of high engagement folks they collapse into internet video/slop feeds. The conversation, fwiw, will funnel into Bluesky as the bottom falls out.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

Well all those other places on the internet for debate, they're decaying, users are fleeing, they're catching on to their hangouts Enshittification. They're going to start emptying into Bluesky at all levels of competence and coherence.Explainer:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ai-...

Cory Doctorow at CF 25: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It

YouTube video by CloudFest

www.youtube.com

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

I can avoid a lot of it, Bluesky's protocol (AT), it lets me tune into science, art, conversation, and the kind of debate I think moves ideas. But, we're mostly lefty / centrist dad types, most of us are chill. I've noticed some of you aren't though! Go forth brave debate bros! For how long?

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

Pressures from outside, I can see politics leaking in here in moments where I need to be thinking about anything else. Good evidence suggests the news is high engagement and miserable. Soup to nuts, reading, reblogging, grandstanding, it's all miserable unless you're actually planning for IRL.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

These social lessons (with expertise that goes back much longer), which the team bakes into the technology, is the secret sauce. It's the thing which will first endanger the status quo we've gotten used it, and it's the thing that will ultimately make this way of using social media kind of amazing.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

Under the hood though, Bluesky is a dinosaur from the future. It's build as a protocol (think ancient bones of RSS, IMAP, POP3) instead of an platform (inescapable walled gardens). It integrates the social lessons of the last 30 internet years into how it works.

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Andrew Przybylski @shuhbillskee.bsky.social · Sep 4

Content, comments, sensibilities feel like they're following familiar feelings to other internet eras. Power law of 90% (lurk) 9% (semi engage), 1% (high engage) is in place. Content moderation is great, leveraging new technologies and handpicked talent. 60% left leaning, 30% centrist, 10% right.

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