David Scales
@tnfalpha.bsky.social
5.3K followers 2.7K following 390 posts
Hospitalist, sociologist @WeillCornell studying information environments, contested illness, medical communication Co-founder, Health for Palestine he/il/el/هو
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Community expertise is essential for monitoring potential information harms, but current “social listening” efforts often bring community input late in the process. It’s time to update our tracking approaches to foreground that shift. @cward1e.bsky.social and I offer one approach in a new paper.
Reposted by David Scales
We need to talk about how social media algorithms push moms down a slippery slope of distrust.

From "Are my kids getting enough support in school?" To "Maybe I should homeschool." To "Maybe modern medicine is bad."

I've seen this first-hand in research I'm doing on parenting apps. 1/🧵
Reposted by David Scales
Reposted by David Scales
At the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, a Facebook group used by nearly 80,000 people to report sightings of federal immigration agents in the Chicago area has been taken down by the social media giant Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
Facebook suspends popular Chicago ICE-sightings group at Trump administration’s request
The group, "ICE Sighting-Chicagoland," has been increasingly used in the last five weeks of President Donald Trump’s intense deportation campaign to warn neighbors that federal agents are nearby.
trib.al
Reposted by David Scales
I'm sorry, is the Trump Administration talking to a tech platform?

Is it...requesting content moderation?
Today following outreach from @thejusticedept, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target @ICEgov agents in Chicago.
The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs. The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.
Reposted by David Scales
Federal workers in public health, Amy Maxmen is a brilliant, seasoned, and sensitive reporter. You can have absolute confidence in her.

(Reach out *non-work* devices/networks/WiFi.)
I'd love to hear from anyone who has been at agencies protecting public health this year (eg CDC, HHS, HRSA, HUD, NIH, OSHA). Privacy respected. Signal is AmyMaxmen.25

🧵Here's a thread of some of my stories this year on the impact of the Trump administration on America's public health.
Hi! I'm a public health reporter moving from THERE to here. Give me a follow if you're interested in my writing & take:

Public health isn't only about outbreaks & vaccines. It's about making society healthier outside of clinics. It requires systemic change, equity, a belief in the common good.
Reposted by David Scales
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
"The DOJ will continue engaging tech companies to *eliminate platforms* . . ."

This is your daily reminder Bondi specifically, and MAGA generally, spent the last 4 years accusing the Biden admin of jawboning tech companies to take down content in violation of the 1A.
Reposted by David Scales
Reposted by David Scales
Nothing shows the dangerous tendency to normalize authoritarianism like the New York Times coverage of the extortion of Harvard. One could read this article and think it is about a free agent inking a contract with the Yankees. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/u...
Harvard Seeks Assurances as Talks Restart in Washington
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by David Scales
Past surgeon generals alongside psychiatric bodies all calling for Kennedy to go citing his attacks on vaccines that look set to reduce access to vaccines and therapies to tackle substance abuse
Past surgeons general warn HHS Secretary Kennedy must go
www.cidrap.umn.edu
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I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.
Reposted by David Scales
Is the irony of the president’s friend buying something called “the free press” and immediately installing a government truth compliance officer lost on everybody?
Breaking News: Paramount is buying The Free Press for $150 million and appointing Bari Weiss, the news site's co-founder, as the editor in chief of CBS News. nyti.ms/4gUnu5D
Reposted by David Scales
Summary of some of the government of Israel's $8 million spend in the US in the past few months to serve propaganda to gen Z, manipulate AI, co-copt influencers, and flood the zone with bots open.substack.com/pub/marcowen...
Reposted by David Scales
Linked to this yesterday, but I am re-upping today because this is the best piece of practical research I have seen lately. It deals with what's gone wrong in political coverage.
"If we want different results, we have to abandon standard practice."

YES.

Finally, someone put together what I and many other critics have been saying about political coverage — then took it further. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/harm-reducti...

Author Michael Hauser Tov is 28 years old.
Reposted by David Scales
Reposted by David Scales
‘One of the strongest cases for harm is that time on these platforms is time away from nourishing interactions with other people.’

Great graph from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com showing that social media has become less social
on.ft.com/4gP83eW
Social media has become less social Change in share of people reporting each reason for using social media (%)
Source: GWI
FT graphic: John Burn-Murdoch / @jburnmurdoch
Reposted by David Scales
Study: Impact of AI Comments on Perceptions of Health Misinformation

"...misinformation posts perceived as highly endorsed, either through social endorsement or AI-generated supportive comments, are viewed as most credible."

"AI comments endorsing misinformation evoke greater fear..."
Reposted by David Scales
When you drag a woman by the hair, beat her and force her to kiss your flag, that’s how you tell the world you are the Good Guys
Absolutely heinous.
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"The global consensus against the starvation weapon took decades to achieve. Now, international apathy risks letting it collapse at the moment it is most needed." - Alex de Waal in @foreignaffairs.com
The Return of the Starvation Weapon
The collapse of global norms fueling the catastrophes in Gaza and Sudan.
www.foreignaffairs.com
Framing matters. Bitcoins as statistics vs victims as individualized humans with relatable stories. The downstream policy effects are not surprising.
Criticism of biased media coverage of Gaza is often discarded as baseless..

so we set out to study the coverage of Palestinian and Israeli victims by German press systematically!

The resulting study 'Hierarchies in Death' was just published #OA by Peacebuilding www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com
Reposted by David Scales
This new column by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social makes me think about when I recently had to talk to the police for yet another safety plan, I tried to “lighten” the mood by saying that we all knew this wasn’t my first rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...
For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists.
Reposted by David Scales
This short passage from a Politico afternoon newsletter captures a huge amount of the advantage gained by lying at scale and the why the DC press corps remains wired for the GOP.
"Corporate consolidation and deep-pocketed tech executives are making it so we’re all living in the information world that Fox News built."
Opinion | Mourn, or Else
www.nytimes.com