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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

The Effects of Online Content Moderation: Evidence from President Trump's Account Deletion

“The toxicity of tweets sent by Trump followers relative to a representative sample of US Twitter users dropped by around 25% after the account deletion. Second, this effect is larger for pro-Trump tweets and Republican users. Third, Trump's suspension reduced the total number of tweets, suggesting a drop

11 Jan 2023

The Intercept Obtains Surveillance Footage of Tesla Crash on Bay Bridge

“These semi-autonomous systems are playing the same sort of trick as ChatGPT: they offer a convincing but shallow impression of a competent driverless car without any broader context to fall back on.”  #Technology [Link]

11 Jan 2023

The blogging resurgence and Known

Colin Devroe on blogging: Oh man am I happy! People that hadn't written on their blog in a long time are blogging again. Websites that hadn't been updated in many years, some over a decade, are being spruced up and published to again. And popular news

11 Jan 2023

Gas stove health concerns add urgency to calls for changes in public housing

“Alarmingly, in a focus group conducted by the Public Health Law Center in Chicago, nearly 100 percent of public housing participants said they have also turned on their gas stoves to stay warm on cold days, which is an added danger for residents.”  #Health [Link]

10 Jan 2023

Apache® Appropriation

“We urge The Apache® Software Foundation to take the necessary steps needed to express the ally-ship they promote so deeply on their website, to act in accordance with their own code of conduct, to “be careful in the words that [they] choose”, and change their name.” +1.  #Technology [Link]

10 Jan 2023

Spot the difference: Boris Johnson appears scrubbed from photo posted by Shapps

“Social media users were quick to point out that Johnson appeared to have been erased from the image – an identical picture is still on the No 10 Flickr account, dated 9 June 2021, with the former PM standing between Shapps and Hart.” How very Stalin of him.  #Democracy [Link]

10 Jan 2023

San Francisco Police Are Using Driverless Cars as Mobile Surveillance Cameras

“Law enforcement agencies already have access to automated license plate readers, geofence warrants, Ring Doorbell footage, as well as the ability to purchase location data. This practice will extend the reach of an already pervasive web of surveillance.”  #Technology [Link]

09 Jan 2023

Seattle schools sue tech giants over social media harm

“[The lawsuit] blames [social media giants] for worsening mental health and behavioral disorders including anxiety, depression, disordered eating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media, and

09 Jan 2023

Noma, Rated the World’s Best Restaurant, Is Closing Its Doors

“The Copenhagen chef René Redzepi says fine dining at the highest level, with its grueling hours and intense workplace culture, has hit a breaking point: “It’s unsustainable.”” Time to close with one last audacious s’mores dish?  #Culture [Link]

09 Jan 2023

Public Transit Goes Off the Rails With Fewer Riders, Dwindling Cash, Rising Crime

“Several of the nation’s largest urban mass-transit systems are at a crossroads, with ridership still depressed three years into the pandemic and federal aid running out.”  #Society [Link]

09 Jan 2023

Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

“The following prompts jostle you out of tiny thinking. Each stretches some dimension of reality to an extreme. So extreme that it is nearly nonsense. But dramatically different perspectives can reveal distinctly new ideas. An idea that would be a 60% solution in an extreme hypothetical case, could be a

09 Jan 2023

‘It never stops’: killings by US police reach record high in 2022

“US law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence since experts first started tracking the killings, a new data analysis reveals.”  #Democracy [Link]

08 Jan 2023
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Writing at the intersection of technology, journalism, and community.

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Ben Werdmuller explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. Always independently published, reader-supported, and free to read.