Robert W. Gehl

Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice, York University.

My latest book, "Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media" was published by Oxford University Press late 2025.

Been on the fediverse since 2017. I'm now helping run AoIR.social

he/him

Trans rights are human rights. I boost #BlackMastodon and #MutualAid posts. I also call for alt text for accessibility.

Public Key

npub19nkz76z2s8xsgepeg4396a0k3c27gz8mfdavpm57t8w8wg5dtk3shud73j

NIP-05 Address

rwg@aoir-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszemp0dp9grngyvsu52cjawhmgu90ypra5k7kqa609nhrhy2x4mgcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ekk7um5wgh8qatzjm2ykc

Publishing to

relay.ditto.pub

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub19nkz76z2s8xsgepeg4396a0k3c27gz8mfdavpm57t8w8wg5dtk3shud73j

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Last Notes

2026-10-20 05:10:53 UTC

Why is the CBC fixating on 23% of the population voting for a referendum to have a referendum? Um... they are getting crushed, if these numbers hold.
#alberta #CBC

2026-10-20 04:48:59 UTC

So... Elections Alberta apparently failed to supply enough ballots to First Nations polling places, had to shut down several polling places, and does not know when the final polling place will close... but there are people there who want to go it alone? The feds didn't run this election.

2026-10-16 22:36:52 UTC

I am being just overwhelmed with amazing research on #alternativeSocialMedia during an #AoIR2026 panel right now. The work happening now is going to resonate for years.

2026-09-26 18:55:25 UTC

1980s-era teen hackers really ought to have built time machines to a future in which they could just claim their keyboards went 'rogue' -- they would have had far less trouble with the feds

2026-08-11 12:47:25 UTC

The world's leading tautologist was asked about the secret to their success.
"I'm successful because I have had success," they replied without hesitation.
You, too, can be a successful tautologist.

2026-08-01 14:54:58 UTC

If you're not soul-crushingly exhausted, you're not paying attention

2026-07-30 16:37:49 UTC

Megacorp just bought all the rare Stradivarius violins in existence to train their robots on vibrato technique. Per law, the violins have been shredded and are now being repurposed as toothpicks

2026-07-23 17:05:14 UTC

That age-old, heartwarming tale of the heroes swooping in to solve the entirely predictable problem they themselves created.
https://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-meta-glasses-banning-pickup-prank-creeps-2026-7

2026-07-15 21:07:31 UTC

This Messi fellow is pretty good at the game of soccer

2026-06-13 15:21:34 UTC

I love #Linux because it makes my laptops last so long the stickers on them get all worn out

2026-06-11 21:46:45 UTC

My latest FOSS Academic post is a doozy. It's "Reading the Digital Safety Act with My Mastodon Admin Hat On":
https://fossacademic.tech/2026/06/11/reading-digital-safety-act.html
I'm reading Canada's proposed Digital Safety Act. My conclusion is that the proposed regulations could be very burdensome to non-profit, community-run social media, including AoIR.social.
I'd love feedback on this, particularly from Canadian fediverse admins.
#mastodon #fediverse #Canada

2026-06-05 18:18:00 UTC

about once a week I hear someone tell me that the fediverse failed and is dead
and every day I find something new on it, some new instance, or some new account or interesting post
take that how you will
#fediverse

2026-06-04 16:09:54 UTC

My latest blog post is my first run at a generative AI policy for students. It's not what you think. I came up with a personal code of conduct first. I figure that, if I'm going to ask students to avoid genAI, I need to declare my own relationship to it:
https://fossacademic.tech/2026/06/04/gen-ai-policy.html
Next time, I will draft a policy for my students.
#generativeAI #academicchatter #writing #FOSSacademic

2026-05-30 13:59:32 UTC

A bunch of reviews are in for Move Slowly and Build Bridges, my book about the fediverse, and... they're good!
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com/endorsements.html
"essential reading... realistic, honest, and deeply informed... highly recommended reading... an academic text that's enjoyable and easy to read... insightful, superbly researched... a better version of what the internet could be..."
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges

2026-05-18 17:27:32 UTC

My university, York University, seems very capable of writing big checks to Microsoft to handle email but god forbid I try to get an individual person paid for something like translating an article or providing cover art for a book.

2026-04-28 16:05:59 UTC

I might not be at #fediforum this time but I did my bit, hosting a #Mastodon workshop for folks in Serbia, Mexico, and Canada.
My basic presentation is here:
https://www.robertwgehl.org/presentations/MastodonWorkshop.html
Happy to chat with others who are curious about Mastodon and the fediverse.

2026-04-25 14:19:41 UTC

Hey Linux server admin type folks: do you recommend using Cockpit to monitor servers and do admin work?
https://cockpit-project.org/
It's getting to the point where I have quite a few small servers scattered about the Internet. I tend to go through them all once a month to update them and check on them. I think I need to get a bit more active in watching them, though. Would Cockpit be a good choice?
#linux #admins #servers

2026-04-04 13:00:02 UTC

Taken together, fediblock and the Bad Space reveal the politics of defederating on the fediverse....
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2026-03-29 19:28:50 UTC

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@nprofile…gfcd a position forged in the molten steel of 10,000 second half collapses

2026-03-27 19:49:35 UTC

I do not know why I even bother applying for grants. They are a timesuck that always ends in failure. I can write 2 books in the time it takes to apply for and fail to get 1 grant. I'm kind of exaggerating but not by much.
#academicGripes

2026-02-25 17:06:19 UTC

starting to think the internet was a mistake

2026-01-28 15:54:58 UTC

Yesterday I met with a bunch of folks who plan on advocating for politicians, municipalities, journalists, and others to set up accounts on the #fediverse. The focus is on Canada. I'm totally on board for it, because I've long advocated for folks to leave corporate social media, and let's face it... that's an area dominated by US corporations.
Democratic deliberation in Canada is far too important to trust to US corporations.
#MastoCanadaGov

2026-01-22 16:52:32 UTC

Hey, Canadians!
I'm looking for recommendations for podcasts about Canada. Right now I listen to quite a few, mostly focusing on politics and news. I also listen to APTN news about Indigenous issues.
But there's a glaring gap: Quebec. I'm an American so of course I never learned French, and while I can work on that, are there good podcasts (or news sources) that discuss Quebec for Anglophones?
Another area I'm interested in is the Maritimes.
#canada #askFedi

2026-01-20 19:03:54 UTC

Anyone making a version of Noscript (the Javascript blocking plugin for Firefox) that blocks "AI assistants" or any other such garbage?

2026-01-20 14:00:02 UTC

Critical reverse engineering includes a normative component: the goal is to make something better than the original. What is “better” can vary quite a bit. In my research, I’ve studied alternatives that center protections for free speech, seeking to avoid censorship....
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2026-01-14 14:10:08 UTC

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@nprofile…ume6 is that West Branch?

2026-01-13 14:18:13 UTC

The first post of 2026 on the Alternative Social Media Researchers Blog is live! It's by @nprofile…p6py and it presents a syllabus of a course in social media ethics. The course uses a classroom instance of Mastodon to work through ethical issues in digital media.
https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/2026/01/12/teaching-mastodon.html
Are you also teaching using Mastodon or other alternative social media? Reach out to us!
#alternativeSocialMedia #pedagogy

2025-12-22 14:00:03 UTC

Denying the Dogmas of Free Speech Absolutism and Individualism...
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-12-21 18:53:45 UTC

Latest FOSS Academic post is -- you guessed it -- a 2025 year in review post. Thrill to the fact that I'm using much of the same FOSS to do my work as I always have! Feel the chills as I talk about #generativeAI and how terrible it is! Above all, join me in living the FOSS Academic Lifestyle Dream!
https://fossacademic.tech/2025/12/21/year-in-review.html
Replies to this post will appear as comments on the blog thanks to the magic of #ActivityPub!
#FOSSacademic

2025-12-16 15:11:04 UTC

Someone at a conference I'm attending just called ChatGPT "capitalism on cocaine."

2025-12-12 16:54:06 UTC

Every day, I check my web site logs. It's very clear human visitors to my various websites and blogs are rare. Clearly the sites are being scraped, constantly. This is in spite of the fact that they're all static sites and I write posts maybe twice a month at the most.
Must I put it all behind Cloudflare? Or must I introduce "proof of work" style friction? Or do I just give up and let my work be part of the planet-burning machine?
Suggestions welcome.
#askFedi #webAdministration

2025-11-24 15:53:33 UTC

the internet sucks
I use a VPN because ISPs can now monitor what we do and sell the resulting data. Plus I've had ISPs kill media streams because they can.
But because I use a VPN, email providers, work systems, banks all act like I'm a cybercriminal. I'm lucky if I only have to deal with a CAPTCHA. Worse yet, I often get emails throttled, or my connection is simply blocked.
thanks, internet

2025-11-23 14:00:02 UTC

The adoption of codes of conduct not only differentiated Mastodon from corporate social media sites, such as Twitter, but also from pre-existing, FOSS-based, federated social media systems, most notably GNU social. Started in 2010, GNU social had been the flagship FOSS alternative to Twitter....
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-11-19 14:00:03 UTC

Federated social media is a radical departure from corporate social media. While big companies like Google and Microsoft produce email servers that can intercommunicate with hundreds of other providers, in the world of social media, cross-company communication is largely unheard of....
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-11-15 17:35:22 UTC

Hey, #admins!
Along with a grad student, I am working on a paper the surveys Mastodon (and forks -- Hometown, Glitch) servers that have some connection to #Canada.
We have done a lot of digging and have found ~40 instances that have some connection to Canada. We presented our work recently:
https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/CanadaFediASM.html#1
But! Maybe we're missing some. If you are willing to share, please let me know if your Mastodon/fork instance meets this criteria.
Boosts appreciated!

2025-11-09 23:44:44 UTC

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@nprofile…hpz8 I'm not quite sure they are capable of sussing out this sort of thing

2025-11-09 20:02:12 UTC

at what point will people learn that expensive, energy-intensive technologies that are developed and deployed in metropoles and have made a small group of people hyperrich will not, in fact, 'democratize' anything?
it's groundhog day up in this place

2025-11-09 19:39:51 UTC

I'm grading student papers, and I can report that one effect of generative AI is that I now suspect everything my students submit. And that's not a good place to be in while grading.
#banGenAIfromUniversities

2025-10-29 13:00:02 UTC

FOSS and federated alternative social media are important because they fundamentally challenge our assumptions about how social media needs to work. A basic insight from the field of science and technology studies (STS) is useful here: it could be otherwise....
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-10-07 22:26:15 UTC

Because we need more #dogsofmastodon, here is Agnes.
https://cdn.masto.host/aoirsocial/media_attachments/files/115/335/228/777/624/553/original/1a163fb70f5f8170.jpg

2025-10-04 00:42:22 UTC

Hey! If you're new to the fediverse and curious about it, may I humbly suggest my new book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges?
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com/
It offers a history of Mastodon and discusses the highs and lows of content moderation and governance on the fediverse. This is a complex space, but... it's *our* space. We can make it what we want.
#fediverse #mastodon #alternativeSocialMedia

2025-07-22 19:04:19 UTC

Pleased to announce that my book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media, is now available online, and will be out in print in a couple weeks!
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
That site has more stuff, too -- links to related articles, some notes about how I researched it, and a contact form in case you want to talk about the fediverse with me! (I'd be happy to chat with journalists about it!)
#academicChatter #bookstodon #fediverse #mastodon

2025-06-17 16:46:07 UTC

After almost a decade of Mastodon, and several years post-Musk buying Twitter, it's so odd that reporters still confuse Mastodon.social with Mastodon as a whole:
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/mastodon-updates-its-terms-to-prohibit-ai-model-training/
(yes, they clarify things later in the article. But the framing is M.S = Mastodon as a whole)

2025-06-16 16:24:46 UTC

This has to be my favorite thing I've found on the Internet in a while.
https://medium.com/@HeathEvans/content-is-king-essay-by-bill-gates-1996-df74552f80d9
A marketer using Medium to build a personal brand copypasted Bill Gates's 1996 "Content is King" article in full. The most highlighted bit is the bit about paying "content providers."
It's the ouroboros of content -- one of the finest expressions of the desire to feed content to itself.
#contentCreators

2025-06-09 17:39:24 UTC

Years ago I almost entirely cut Google out of my professional (and personal) life: https://fossacademic.tech/2021/07/03/DeGoogleSearch.html
The exception I can't get away from is Google Scholar, which has been quite useful and really has not changed much in the past few decades.
But lately I've been seeing really shitty results from it. For example, it returns items that don't have the keywords, or items that are nowhere near the date range I set.
Is Google Scholar now enshittified by AI? Something else?
#academicChatter

2025-06-02 20:23:58 UTC

The latest FOSS Academic post is short but very, very sweet, because it's the public reveal of the cover for my next book!
https://fossacademic.tech/2025/06/02/move-slowly-cover.html
Academic authors don't often get much input into the covers of their books, but for Move Slowly and Build Bridges, I was lucky enough to get Oxford to buy art from a fediverse artist you might know...
#FOSSAcademic #bookstodon

2025-06-02 16:18:11 UTC

Wolfgang Messner, writing in @nprofile…et2z on how generative AI could homogenize culture:
"The danger is not that AI will fail us, but that people will accept the mediocrity of its outputs as the norm. When everything is fast, frictionless and “good enough,” there’s the risk of losing the depth, nuance and intellectual richness that define exceptional human work."
https://theconversation.com/is-ai-sparking-a-cognitive-revolution-that-will-lead-to-mediocrity-and-conformity-256940

2025-06-02 15:09:02 UTC

I talked to @nprofile…ncxj about generative AI's impact on teaching. Apparently I wasn't alone... not by a long shot. @nprofile…p9x3 got a ton of responses about this topic and ran many of them here:
https://www.404media.co/teachers-are-not-ok-ai-chatgpt/
While it's distressing to read all of them, it's good to see I'm not alone.
#generativeAI #higherEducation #teaching #academicChatter

2025-05-28 23:38:15 UTC

I know these days generative AI can just pump out thousands of words, but for a human, it takes a lot more work. This is a tiny window into the process of writing a book: 15GB of data, 22K files, built up over 4 years, and probably over a million words of drafting and notes went into writing Move Slowly and Build Bridges.
#bookstodon
https://cdn.masto.host/aoirsocial/media_attachments/files/114/588/072/865/246/285/original/6a033f72049cf153.png

2025-05-28 17:46:29 UTC

I just read an article about generative AI in higher education and it quoted someone with the title "Vice President for AI" and I am seething.
How about instead of making yet another goddamned VP position, that university actually hire and pay professors?

2025-05-23 15:25:54 UTC

it's great fun to be a human author of books during a time when machines are either writing them or promoting fake books that never existed

2025-05-22 18:42:41 UTC

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@nprofile…t9gy @nprofile…5j73 @nprofile…gd7f I've written a bit here and there, but agreed: the history of OStatus/diaspora federated social media itself is a rich tapestry that's very hard to present.

2025-05-21 18:42:18 UTC

My university, York U in Toronto, is now handing out 'clean' devices to faculty who are going to the US:
https://www.yorku.ca/vpepc/faculty-affairs/supporting-scholars-resources-for-u-s/

2025-05-12 19:47:46 UTC

Are there other academic researchers out there interested in drafting a statement about refusing to use generative AI for research (from initial planning/design/conception through writing, editing, and beyond)?
I imagine something similar to this: https://refusinggenai.wordpress.com/, but for the research process.
Feel free to reply publicly or via DM.
#generativeAI #LLMs #academicchatter

2025-05-12 19:32:25 UTC

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@nprofile…yc9s Funny you should say that, since you're in society!
i am very smart

2025-05-12 01:02:22 UTC

title in Slime Trail Sans
#monsterdon

2025-05-12 01:01:14 UTC

every time you see a slug, you gotta do a shot
oh, wait, don't do that
#monsterdon

2025-05-12 00:23:31 UTC

I do believe I will Slugs-it-up tonight
#monsterdon

2025-05-10 02:16:03 UTC

I just witnessed something I think I will never experience again: a PhD student created a two hour improv comedy show about key texts in Science and Technology Studies. At one point, she dressed up as a scallop. It was hilarious and fun!
#STS #academicchatter

2025-05-09 13:55:48 UTC

I don't think I want to teach anymore.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html

2025-05-09 13:41:14 UTC

"If I was president, that war wouldn't have started."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/09/world/india-pakistan-kashmir

2025-05-08 22:18:54 UTC

Latest FOSS Academic post is live!
https://fossacademic.tech/2025/05/08/ai-review.html
I know, I know. I'm probably getting a reputation as someone who really does not like generative AI. Happy to argue about it. My latest complaint is that peer reviewers will increasingly have to review articles written in part by generative AI. I think that authors need to disclose *any* use of generative AI so that reviewers can decide if they want to review.
I explain why in the post.
#generativeAI #academicChatter #peerReview

2025-05-03 13:00:02 UTC

Then, not much later came 2016: the Brexit referendum in the UK and the US Presidential election. As a site that allows for political advertising, Facebook (and its child company Instagram) figured heavily in both events....
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/move-slowly-and-build-bridges-9780197776681?cc=ca&lang=en&
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-05-02 21:26:03 UTC

I'm reading up on the whole Reddit "Change My View" AI experiment.
It's striking to me how often the researchers use the adjective "ethical" in their responses. But reading the passages, it seems to me they just ethically inserted "ethical" into their ethical statements to shift the ethical conversation from a conversation about ethics to an ethical conversation where "ethical" becomes a meaningless ethical buzzword.
If you catch my ethical drift.
#reddit #AI #academicchatter #researchethics

2025-04-16 14:58:24 UTC

One of my favorite genres of fedi posts is the @nprofile…zwgs plaintive plea for people to explain things to her, things that she is in the top 0.001% of experts in.
Can someone explain to me why I find those posts so hilarious? 😆

2025-04-15 13:28:15 UTC

As if I needed more reasons to loathe Elsevier.
Lately I've received peer review requests from Elsevier journals. If I decline their request via the email link, it takes me to a website that has an angry red box that says "Action not allowed."
Ok, so I will email the editor to say I can't do it. That apparently goes to some IT support system, not the editor.
And today I got an email implying I was being unprofessional because I did not respond to their reviewer request.
#academicChatter 1/2

2025-04-13 13:00:02 UTC

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:
Will people keep using Twitter, even after Musk’s takeover – even after he changed its name to “X”? Is this time different? As of this writing, that remains an open question....
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-04-10 23:36:34 UTC

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@nprofile…5nrt The lows of TNG are bleak. The highs are incredible.

2025-04-04 20:21:31 UTC

at this point, if you told me the tariff-induced market crash was a means for wealthy people to buy stocks from predetermined companies before Trump allows lobbyists to convince him to remove tariffs such that those particular companies have a magical turnaround in their stock price, I'd say... you're probably right

2025-04-04 19:35:53 UTC

Just got out of Democracy Exchange, an event in Toronto. I attended a day long workshop about improving local journalism in Canada. I definitely advocated for Canadian-run federated social media! #elbowsuptech #dxc25

2025-04-04 13:00:02 UTC

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:
As Guy recalls, the problem was that “the goalposts kept moving. Other specs were getting wrapped up, but there was always a new requirement for ActivityPub that seemed to come out of the blue from one of the chairs of the group....
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-04-02 13:00:02 UTC

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:
It’s time, Balkan and the Small Tech Foundation argue, to degrow things like corporate social media. Degrowth is a way of thinking that counters years of capitalist fantasies of infinite growth....
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-03-30 13:00:02 UTC

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:
Critical reverse engineering includes a normative component: the goal is to make something better than the original. What is “better” can vary quite a bit. In my research, I’ve studied alternatives that center protections for free speech, seeking to avoid censorship....
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-03-28 18:24:31 UTC

I keep hearing people call legitimate concerns about LLMs/generative AI a "moral panic."
I really hope folks stop using that framing. This is not the same as parents getting freaked out about Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s. This is a moment when huge, for-profit interests are seeking to exploit the creativity of writers, artists, and anyone else who creates. It's completely legitimate to express concerns. It's not a moment of "Won't someone PLEASE think about the children!?!".

2025-03-27 17:09:03 UTC

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@nprofile…dhpg @nprofile…zwgs oof, that is bad. I'll contact them to get it fixed! Thanks!

2025-03-27 16:51:21 UTC

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@nprofile…zwgs yes! It's all about how Mastodon invented ActivityPub! 😆

2025-03-27 16:46:27 UTC

My book about Mastodon and the fediverse is now available for pre-order!
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/move-slowly-and-build-bridges-9780197776681?q=gehl&lang=en&cc=ca#
#Mastodon #fediverse #bookstodon #academicchatter

2025-03-24 18:30:54 UTC

I know it's happened many times to many other folks like me, but here's a note to people in the sciences coming from an interaction I just had:
Please don't expect to just add social scientists/humanities folks like me to your grant projects at the last minute to satisfy a requirement for ethics or whatever. We're not widgets you can just plug in.
#academicchatter #academicmastodon

2025-03-24 13:00:02 UTC

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:
There is a significant batch of material I’ve drawn on that is not readily accessible unless one pays for it. I have had the privilege of generous research funding in the past few years. Such funding allows me to buy books and computers....
#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

2025-03-22 15:39:12 UTC

I know activists use corporate social media because many other people do, but it also means you put all your eggs in a really shitty basket. And it's meant that since about 2006 or so.
https://www.politico.eu/article/musks-x-suspends-opposition-accounts-turkey-protest-civil-unrest-erdogan-imamoglu-istanbul-mayor/

2025-03-21 15:27:14 UTC

that whooshing sound you're hearing is me rushing off to join any class action lawsuit against Meta for training its LLMs on my books
#Meta #LLaMA #generativeAI

2025-03-17 19:58:46 UTC

"Spring is finally here," the old farmer said.
"How do you know?" I asked.
The farmer didn't speak. Just gestured to a tree. And there I could see it.
On a branch, basking in the sunlight: the #fediverseChick

2025-03-15 13:50:04 UTC

This thread is a handy timeline of the threats against Canada made by Trump. Every bit is true. I've been watching intently (I'm a USian living in Toronto).
https://defcon.social/@tprophet/114150958658307132
#canpol #uspol

2025-03-13 16:13:45 UTC

I'm thinking of creating a sort of pledge/agreement to use with both academic collaborators as well as grad students, where we (the collaborating team or the student and I) would pledge to never use generative AI in our work.
That would mean I would not collaborate with other researchers who want to use these tools, and I would not supervise students who want to use these tools.
I'm curious to hear thoughts on this.
#academicChatter #generativeAI #AI #academicWriting #research

2025-03-11 13:40:32 UTC

An interview with Frances Latchford, chair of Gender and Women's Studies at York University, on the reasons why York is suspending that program and the damage that suspension is doing:
https://torontolife.com/city/york-professor-frances-latchford-on-the-universitys-decision-to-slash-liberal-arts-programs/
"From 2018 to 2023, the size of York’s senior administration team expanded by 37 per cent, and their compensation increased by 47 per cent, despite a 0.3 per cent increase in enrolment and a three per cent increase in total revenue."
#YorkUniversity #Canada #academicchatter

2025-03-10 16:39:22 UTC

Along with @nprofile…j4z7 and another speaker TBD, I'll be talking (remotely) at LSE about alternative social media in May. It's a ways out but the registration link is live:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/big-tech-is-broken-what-can-we-do-about-it-now-tickets-1268506811019
#alternativeSocialMedia

2025-03-05 21:55:57 UTC

The latest FOSS Academic post is "Standards War?":
https://fossacademic.tech/2025/03/05/standardsWar.html
In which I contrast the fact that @nprofile…ax4g is shutting down some of its services against the advent of "Free Our Feeds," and I speculate that maybe we're seeing an ATProto/ActivityPub standards war.
#FOSSAcademic #ATproto #ActivityPub #standards

2025-03-04 19:25:48 UTC

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@nprofile…v7mw Congrats! This looks great!

2025-03-01 15:09:07 UTC

A good rundown of Trump's use of bullshit -- a technical term for stating things without any regard to whether they are true or false:
https://theconversation.com/why-donald-trump-is-a-relentless-bullshitter-249896
Note that this is NOT the same thing as lying -- that involves knowing the truth. Trump's style is simply to say whatever he's thinking and see what happens.
@nprofile…ww50 and I drew on this idea to talk about social engineering (both societal and hacker):
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5281/chapter/3666132/Bullshitting-Deception-Friendliness-and-Accuracy
#bullshit #socialEngineering

2025-02-19 15:13:49 UTC

My university, York U, is suspending admissions to a bunch of programs, mainly in the humanities. This includes Indigenous Studies.
There's news coverage in @nprofile…w0eg. But it doesn't really address the cause.
1/2
#academicchatter #indigenousStudies #YorkU

2025-02-07 21:36:34 UTC

I wrote a short draft overview of alternative social media research, based on a project @nprofile…y2ps and I are working on:
https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/2025/02/07/asm-scholarship-history.html
We trace ASM scholarship back to its early days in the late 2000s, through the Unlike Us conferences, up to more contemporary studies of deplatforming and governance.
#alternativeSocialMedia #academicchatter

2025-02-07 21:07:05 UTC

UsefulSmallCorp is now a part of ConHugeCo. Over the next few months, we'll migrate your account to ConHugeCo, where you will be ignored except when we eliminate the free plan you initially signed up for.

2025-02-06 22:14:48 UTC

Hey, y'all, I've been on the fedi a minute. I've been on Mastodon since 2017, and an admin since '22.
The people at IFTAS are doing great work. Needed work. They provide space for admins to share knowledge, and they build evidence-based blocklists new instances can use to stay safe.
They need help. Now. Consider giving to IFTAS:
https://about.iftas.org/donate/
I've done it.
#fediverse #mutualAid #IFTAS #trustAndSafety

2025-02-04 03:36:58 UTC

Hey, fedi, if I wanted to start a small fediverse server (probably server-of-one) using a Canadian company, do you have any recommendations?
I have experience running stuff on DigitalOcean and Linode, but they're both US companies and I want to #buycanadian
#askFedi

2025-02-03 02:26:33 UTC

The brain scanner gathers all knowledge and converts it into useless information. In other words, early ChatGPT
#monsterdon

2025-02-03 01:50:15 UTC

I think I'm going to lurk-a-don the Monsterdon this eve. I'm exhausted, so maybe I'll just watch the movie and not riff as much.
Hope those Star Creatures turn out to be right neighborly!
#monsterdon

2025-01-29 03:23:13 UTC

I know many folks already know this, but I've been out of the CSS game for a bit, and I have returned to discover CSS Grid and it is the bomb!
None of us float here!

2025-01-28 18:38:55 UTC

@nprofile…ww50 and I wrote a book called "social engineering."
The Trump White House loves that term. What do they mean by it? What is the history of this curious term? And might Trump and his pals, themselves, be engaging in social engineering?
May I humbly suggest you check out our book? It's now available as an e-book on Bookshop.org!
https://bookshop.org/p/books/social-engineering-how-crowdmasters-phreaks-hackers-and-trolls-created-a-new-form-of-manipulativ-e-communication-sean-t-lawson/17170706?ean=9780262368933&next=t&next=t&digital=t

2025-01-23 01:41:12 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…g4hh Last I heard "none of the above" Liberal candidate was winning in a national poll... if the internal polls are correct, that's a huge swing, no?

2025-01-22 15:05:30 UTC

Great interview with @nprofile…xsf8 about Fedipact, the agreement to not federate with Threads. Vanta talks about the big reasons people signed back in '23 -- EEE, poor moderation. Even more relevant today!
https://radiostudent.si/druzba/tehno-klistir/fedi-pakt#
#fedipact #Threads