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sarahagilbert.bsky.social
Research Director, Citizens and Technology Lab, Cornell University, r/AskHistorians moderator I study how to make the internet freer and safer— and how to help the helpers on the ground making that possible. She/her https://citizensandtech.org/
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This is easily one of the best magazine features I have ever read. It is funny, educational, comprehensive and detailed about multiple technical topics while staying accessible to a general reader. I wish I could nominate it for a National Magazine Award. It is well worth your time.

submitted 21 hours ago • 3 comments

Fucking THANK YOU. Like, for real, I need a lot of you to dispense with the fantasies of objective, impartial tech. You are watching the intended purpose of this shit on display as we speak as Grok is hammered into compliance behind the scenes.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants. Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."

submitted 4 days ago • 32 comments

The worst happened. We were DOGE’d. Our NSF funding is gone. So now there’s nothing stopping me from sharing Expert Voices Together, a crisis response system for US-based researchers and journalists facing harassment. It's a true passion project. 🧵 1/ expertvoicestogether.org

submitted 4 days ago • 21 comments

Welcome to the liquidation of American dominance in science

submitted 9 days ago • 115 comments

Nice writeup and good summary of @kkado.bsky.social's work in the Cornell Chronicle. The work is about what we called the *perceptual harms* of GenAI. They are real, and they are different! (between demographic groups, e.g. gender). news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

To mark VE day, I am posting an old folder of anti-fascist posters from the Spanish Civil War. I originally started collecting these to try and choose an image for my book cover, and kept going because they're objectively awesome. Lost many in the last laptop migration, but the best remain...

submitted 10 days ago • 7 comments

The Association of Internet Researchers (@aoir.bsky.social) has released its Risky Research Guide, an essential resource for internet researchers (and risky researchers who use the internet), students and managers In These Times. Congrats @alicetiara.bsky.social and team aoir.org/riskyresearc...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

This post grew to 47 co-signing communities representing over 119 million subscribers. On AskHistorians, we received over 1.1 million views and 11k upvotes with a lot of positive support in our comments and in the crossposts of our co-signers

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

The harm caused by unethical research using Gen AI can't be undone, but the research community should push for change moving forward. In this statement we make two calls to action: 1. for academic gatekeepers to be vigilant and 2. for regulators to support transparency for digital experiments.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

@travislloydphd.bsky.social spoke to r/CMV mods for arxiv.org/html/2311.12... about AI bots, karma farming, accuracy, helping non-native English speakers, and (yes) "weaponized" manipulation (i.e., from r/news mods). Profiling and ideological manipulation by researchers hadn't been on the radar.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

1/ Reddit Legal is getting involved in the case of researchers unethically using r/changemyview in an experiment to test the persuasiveness of AI. That's good, but know what would be MORE helpful? If Reddit actually helped mods detect AI in the first place. www.404media.co/reddit-issui...

submitted 18 days ago • 2 comments

A week and a half ago, my research team learned our grant was among the hundreds terminated. We were working with AH and a few other subs to build a mod tool. I was devastated. The AH mod team rose to action to use it's platform to advocate for the pursuit of knowledge, and that gives me hope.

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

Canada, today is the big day! Polls for the Canadian Federal Election are now open. Make sure to get out and vote: www.elections.ca/home.aspx If you're among the 5% of Canadians considering strategic voting, check out this article www.cbc.ca/news/strateg... & visit votewell.ca before you head out.

submitted 20 days ago • 3 comments

African workers labeling data and providing content moderation are the invisible backbone of AI development. They perform critical labor under challenging conditions, often for minimal pay, yet remain absent from our conversations about the AI value chain.

submitted 20 days ago • 9 comments

Obvious ethical issues aside, imo the threat of LLM’s is not persuading users, it’s LLM’s adding so much noise that users can no longer find the signal. We’re still so focused on persuasion that we don’t recognize comments generated by LLM’s & bots as a form of censorship.

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

This is one of the worst violations of research ethics I've ever seen. Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent, is not "low risk" and, as evidenced by the discourse in this Reddit post, resulted in harm. Great thread from Sarah, and I have additional thoughts. 🧵

submitted 21 days ago • 28 comments

The mods of r/ChangeMyView shared the sub was the subject of a study to test the persuasiveness of LLMs & that they didn't consent. There’s a lot that went wrong, so here’s a 🧵 unpacking it, along with some ideas for how to do research with online communities ethically. tinyurl.com/59tpt988

submitted 21 days ago • 54 comments

Sounds like it’s a mistake to leave public goods in the hands of billionaires who can decide at any moment they’re bored and don’t want to support them anymore bsky.app/profile/clar...

submitted 23 days ago • 87 comments

Spoke to a formerly NSF-funded researcher and a former NSF program officer about the changes to the NSF re: disinformation. They were clear: studying disinformation doesn't cause censorship, but censoring research causes censorship.

submitted 26 days ago • 4 comments

you can change your name under 21 with parental permission if you’re cis, but trans folks aren’t mature enough. trans people are ~1.3% of the US, with no community wealth or institutional power. they’ll take as much from trans folks as the rest of you decide not to stand in the way of them taking.

submitted 26 days ago • 19 comments

I get what Bluesky is going for here because lists have been an unchecked vector for harassment and abuse But phrasing it in terms of "unproven allegations" is bad policy writing which is going to lead to all sorts of headaches for everyone - both users and Bluesky's moderators

submitted 28 days ago • 1 comment

Not surprising that an administration that rose to power on the spread of bullshit and propaganda is terminating the funding of researchers studying these phenomena. We are just receiving word about funding cancellations re: existing grants to members of our team and our colleagues.

submitted 29 days ago • 11 comments

submitted 65 days ago • 12 comments

On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked, "If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?" Allow our scaled diagram to explain...

submitted 33 days ago • 219 comments

I spoke with Business Insider about some of the privacy implications with the pending 23andme sale. The article provides a good overview of the company and data-related concerns. You can read the article here: www.businessinsider.com/23andme-what... [if you hit a paywall: archive.ph/ZA9EW ]

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Cis folks need to read this powerful essay by @haimson.bsky.social to better understand what trans people in the US are going through right now (and as Oliver points out, issues are compounded for trans PoC, immigrants, students, etc.). Travel is just the tip of the iceberg time.com/7272324/tran...

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

US students. Looking to apply to graduate school? Had an offer rescinded recently? The University of British Columbia in Canada will re-open the application portal in some departments for US students from April 14-18. Details: www.grad.ubc.ca/us-applicant... #ubc #AcademicSky #PhDSky #ScienceSky

submitted 36 days ago • 14 comments

THREAD: Under a new law, thousands of prisoners in Louisiana have been cut off from ever getting a chance at parole. Why? Because an algorithm said so. 1/

submitted 37 days ago • 496 comments

Why do scientists still struggle to answer basic questions about the safety of digital tech from AI to social media, even as families point to rising evidence of individual harm with concern & grief? @orbenamy.bsky.social & I have a new article in @science.org: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

submitted 37 days ago • 5 comments

Friends attending #CHI2025, keep your eyes peeled for the AMAZING @cyberbya.bsky.social. She's doing incredible research on anti-harassment using community-led and anti-colonial practices! citizensandtech.org/2025/04/embo...

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments