🚀 We're hiring postdocs/assistant professors for my @erc.europa.eu project, TECHORDER, exploring how companies and states struggle over tech and global order.
The project is based at the Dep of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
Deadline: 20 April
Apply: employment.ku.dk/all-vacancie...
Thanks! You understand correctly. No model. Just a stylized form of user-user collaborative filtering based on participants political self-id, rather than inferring profiles. E.g., in one condition we show liberals the posts that other liberals ("people like them") upvoted the most.
Check out the up-to-date preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps...
(p.s. previous versions of this work appeared at #IC2S2 and #CogSci)
(3) No AI needed. We don’t need to classify any posts to implement our ranking algorithms. Instead, our algorithms operate only on naturally-occurring engagement signals (upvotes and downvotes) and basic user demographics (liberal vs conservative self-id).
(2) We examine collective-level outcomes like consensus among participants’ beliefs, and the formation of beliefs for which there is an objective, ground truth. This is different from examining effects on individual-level outcomes related to subjective perceptions (e.g., “feeling thermometers”).
If you’ve ever wanted to test alternative social media algorithms, but been bummed out thinking that you have to either collaborate with big tech or have a team of research engineers, then our experimental design might be the template you’re looking for.
There are a some easily overlooked aspects of this work that I think are worth highlighting:
(1) Our experiment is platform-independent and relatively cheap and easy to implement.
But, we also find some encouraging evidence that alternative algorithms like bridging-based ranking and intelligence-based ranking can promote prosocial outcomes as intended.
Our results show that personalized engagement-based ranking (where people see the posts they are most likely to “like,” as on many popular platforms) is the worst. Exposing groups to that ranking algorithm increased polarization and decreased belief accuracy more often than any other algorithm.
🧑💻 New paper at #chi2026 w @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social and @stefanherzog.bsky.social
Are you worried about how social media algorithms affect people’s beliefs? We are, so we tested engagement-based ranking algorithms against alternatives in a pre-reg’d collaborative filtering experiment... 🧵
📣 Applications for the 23rd Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality are now open!
✨Join us in Berlin @arc-mpib.bsky.social June 08–16, 2026, to explore the topic of “Decision Making in the Age of AI”.
✏️ More details + application form (deadline: March 16): www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/research/res...
Very happy to see our ice-fishing paper on the cover of @science.org this week! 🎣🎉
We tracked large groups of Finnish competitive ice-fishers to study how social foragers use social information when searching for resources. 🐟
Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (contact me for open access)
Ever wonder what proportion of high profile social media research is tied to the tech industry?
New from me, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social and @carlbergstrom.com.
Thread tomorrow.
arxiv.org/abs/2601.11507
Christmas came early this year! Very happy to see our paper out in Science Advances. Led by @lfoswaldo.bsky.social, we ran a unique collective field-experiment on Reddit, to better understand who is participating in online debates and why.
Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
And more below 👇
I am hiring a postdoc for a DFF-funded project on social influence, and the decision processes that fuel rich-get-richer dynamics in the online/offline world. The position is for up to a year, competitive Danish salary, remote work possible. Interested or know somebody? DM me or share!
Generative AI (GenAI) can do more than just answer questions - it can tailor its responses based on users’ preferences, habits, and even emotional tone.
We call this capability hypercustomization - explored in our new paper in Behavioral Science & Policy. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
🔔
Often our tech policy interventions operate from linear, top-down assumptions that don't account for the complexity they seek to govern.
To dig into this I'm co-organizing a workshop at ACM CI 2025 with Jason Burton, Joe Bak-Coleman, + Naomi Shiffman. You should come!
ci-x-tp.github.io
I am privileged to announce the publication of the Anti-Autocracy Handbook: sks.to/autocracy 1/12
🚨 Workshop update 🚨
We're excited to announce that @naomishiffman.bsky.social will be joining to share her experience with designing and passing implementable tech policy.
Our half-day agenda is up (ci-x-tp.github.io) and early registration for @acmci.bsky.social ends on 23 June — don’t miss out!
(1/4) Ever wondered what tech policy might look like if it were informed by research on collective intelligence and complex systems? 🧠🧑💻
Join @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @lukethorburn.com, and myself in San Diego on Aug 4th for the Collective Intelligence x Tech Policy workshop at @acmci.bsky.social!
🚨New podcast episode!!🚨
Ralph Hertwig calls for a shift from nudging to boosting—empowering people with the skills to make informed decisions. It’s a transparent way to strengthen agency in the face of challenges like misinformation, climate change, and more.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9r-...
(4/4) Interested in participating?
RSVP to get access to pre-workshop materials here: ci-x-tp.github.io.
Complete the official registration here: ci.acm.org/2025/
And stay tuned for more updates!
(3/4) The workshop will be interactive. We aim to involve participants from both sides of the science-policy interface, and a majority of the time will be spent collaboratively developing collective-intelligence-inspired policy recommendations.
(2/4) We’ll talk about what it means to adopt the collective intelligence perspective, and how that perspective can change the way we approach some of today’s most pressing tech policy issues — like how to reform social media and how to responsibly govern AI.
(1/4) Ever wondered what tech policy might look like if it were informed by research on collective intelligence and complex systems? 🧠🧑💻
Join @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @lukethorburn.com, and myself in San Diego on Aug 4th for the Collective Intelligence x Tech Policy workshop at @acmci.bsky.social!
New preprint with @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @lewan.bsky.social @randomwalker.bsky.social @orbenamy.bsky.social @lfoswaldo.bsky.social where we argue for a complex-system perspective to understand the causal effects of social media on society and for a triangulation of methods
arxiv.org/abs/2505.09254
I'm excited that I can finally share what I've been working on for the past 9 months:
The United Nations 2025 Human Development Report: "A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI" 🧵
hdr.undp.org/content/huma...
Another example of why we need a new approach to address the ethics of social media experiments
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
@vincentjstraub.bsky.social
A group of six people sits around a large wooden table working collaboratively with laptops, tablets, smartphones, and notebooks. The screens display a presentation slide titled “Discussion Outline.” The table also has coffee mugs, notebooks with handwritten notes, and small potted plants, suggesting a casual but focused team meeting or brainstorming session.
🚨🤖👥
Webinar "Collective Intelligence in the era of LLMs"
April 24 5-6pm CET
www.hacid-project.eu/hacid-webina...
Register
nesta.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Speakers:
- Jason Burton, Copenhagen Business School
- Lucie Flek, University of Bonn
- Nikolas Zöller, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
🚨 UPCOMING EVENT: Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms, April 10-11 at @columbiauniversity.bsky.social & online. In collaboration with Senior AI Advisor @sethlazar.org & co-sponsored by the Knight Institute and @columbiaseas.bsky.social. RSVP: knightcolumbia.org/events/artif...
