#danahboyd — Public Fediverse posts

Pluralistic: The online community trilemma (16 Feb 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/

Pluralistic: The online community trilemma (16 Feb 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/

Pluralistic: The online community trilemma (16 Feb 2026)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/

Pluralistic: The online community trilemma (16 Feb 2026)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/

Pluralistic: The online community trilemma (16 Feb 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/

The Social Media Moral Panic Is All About Confusing Risks & Harms | Techdirt

Review of danah boyd’s latest:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/10/the-social-media-moral-panic-is-all-about-confusing-risks-harms/

https://alecmuffett.com/article/110455

#danahBoyd #onlineSafety

Don't miss #danahboyd on data voids - the potentially insidious uses of intentional informational black holes. Insightful and well-written, as always. https://datasociety.net/points/making-sense-of-data-voids/

(And yes, as dana points out, "data void" rhymes with "dana boyd", so don't be fake annoyed or take a 'roid.)

This!

"I have no interest in defending tech companies. I’ve spent years lambasting their abuses of privacy, their vulnerabilities towards algorithmic manipulation, their toxic dependence on advertising, and their arrogance. What irks me is not the idea that tech should be regulated, but the tendency by politicians to (ab)use children in their pursuit of regulating tech."

#DanahBoyd, 2024

https://zephoria.substack.com/p/kosa-isnt-designed-to-help-kids

"To be honest, I am pulling my hair out over 'online safety' bills that pretend to be focused on helping young people when they’re really anti-tech bills that are using children for political agendas in ways that will fundamentally hurt the most vulnerable young people out there."

#DanahBoyd, 2024

https://zephoria.substack.com/p/kosa-isnt-designed-to-help-kids

#TechRegulation #FourHorsemen #ThinkOfTheChildren #KOSA

Data Voids: 2018 research on how conspiracy communities are self-reinforcing when their insular language is exploited by search engine optimization
https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids-where-missing-data-can-easily-be-exploited/
#disinformation #socialmedia #propaganda #danahboyd #search #seo #+

Love these insights from #DanahBoyd, wrapped around thoughts from a re-read of Fahrenheit 451. #Censorship #Children

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2023/09/26/the-screens-are-the-symptom.html

I’ve bolded what I consider to be the most important part of this article by danah boyd. It’s a reflection on two different ‘camps’ when it comes to AI and jobs, but she surfaces an important change that’s already happened in society when it comes to the workforce: we just don’t train people any more.
Couple this […]

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/05/09/ai-and-work-socialisation/

I’ve read a lot of danah boyd’s work over the years, especially given how her research interests intersect with my work. In this long-ish post, she argues for an approach to AI driven by curiosity and the concept of ‘projectories’ (subject to guardrails).

I just returned from a three month sabbatical spent mostly offline diving […]

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/04/10/curiosity-projectories-and-ai/

#crisislines
When someone makes the choice to contact a crisis line, first that's no easy choice.

Second, it's generally not a moment when a person's mind is at its most clear.

Third, this may be a child.

My advocacy is to put a stop to the patronizing, disrespectful, repugnant practice of taking advantage of persons who use crisis lines, and the volunteers who answer. The trampling of consent with the boots of "data for good". #CrisisTextLine, #TheTrevorProject, #988Lifeline, #danahboyd.

@scottspeaking There's a growing set of literature, though generally you could look at the rise and fall of movements, social groups, religious movements (look up the Second Great Awakening and Burned Over Districts sometime), etc.

My basic take is that there are two forces at play: (1) network effects though not the n^2 of Metcalfe's Law but some diminishing-return function (Odlyzko and Tilly suggest log(n): https://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf) and (2) frictional costs which are more-or-less constant per node instance (though which can be modified across the network as a whole through various network-hygiene measures).

So, if you've got diminishing returns and constant costs, at some point adding another node no longer breaks even.

The pathological death spiral occurs when high value nodes start defecting from the network. This is the Yogi Berra effect: "Nobody (who's anybody) goes there anymore, it's too crowded (with everybody who's nobody)".

Danah Boyd has some great early work looking at the dynamic between Facebook (upstart) and MySpace (incumbent) in the mid/late aughts: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/ICA2009.html

That's related to the Nazi At the Bar problem as described by @imaragesparkle at Birdsite: https://old.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kicking_a_nazi_out_as_soon_as_they_walk_in/. There are some founding / infiltrating cohorts who are so toxic that they lead to the flight of others. See generally Brain Drain and recognise that this can work in multiple directions for multiple groups, e.g., European Jews fleeing to the US whilst American Blacks fled to Europe. Same fundamental reason, but different dynamics affecting different groups. (This is also a #GreshamsLaw phenomenon, which is another trope of mine.)

I've written my own thoughts on why Usenet died, which Fedizens might want to consider. Not all the factors apply, though some do, upshot: it simply became too high-risk (and low-reward) to host Usenet: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_usenet_died/

#Usenet #MetcalfesLaw #OdlyzkoTilly #AndrewOdlyzko #SocialNetworks #RiseAndFall #DanahBoyd

I was alerted that Dr. boyd was missing by journalist #AlexandraLevine, by chance, that #danahboyd was gone.

Here's a wayback machine link to current board of directors. Lisa Fetterman is the new #CrisisTextLine board member.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230106001034/https://www.crisistextline.org/about-us/our-team/

Please donate to the Internet Archive, if you are able.

#crisislines
#danahboyd no longer on #CrisisTextLine board of directors, apparently.

@onepict @dredmorbius @gleemie @jomc @arsonatdennys @p2173 @kendraserra @Iwillleavenow @sherrying

Between Monday Jan 2 and today Crisis Text Line removed Dr. danah boyd from their website listing of board of director members. I have been critical of her leadership (blog: https://reformcrisistextline.com/deception-has-no-place-here/)

I happened to grab the attached screen shot of board of directors Jan 2. I try to keep track of them.
(cont'd)

https://dissociatedpress.net/2022/12/05/link-o-rama-banning-ai-thinking-about-failure-goblin-mode/

@onepict Oh holy hell, Dana's on the board?!!!

I am on the board of @CrisisTextLine. Many people are asking us to account for our decisions. To do so, I wrote a blog post detailing my ongoing struggle to govern responsibly and ethically: http://zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/01/31/crisis-text-line-from-my-perspective.html

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/zephoria/status/1488308977087647745

Danah Boyd, YOU ARE IN THE WRONG

#DanahBoyd #CrisisTextLine #Surveillance #MentalHealth

Someone better let the NZ news media know about this ...

"Election polling is dead, and we need to accept that."

- #DanahBoyd, 2016

https://points.datasociety.net/media-end-reporting-on-polls-c9b5df705b7f

"Every pollster got it wrong. And there’s a reason. They weren’t paying attention to the various structural forces that made their sample flawed, the various reasons why a disgusted nation wasn’t going to contribute useful information to inform a media spectacle. This abuse of data has to stop. We need data to be responsible, not entertainment."

- #DanahBoyd, 2016

https://points.datasociety.net/reality

#polls #data

"The media is supposed to be a check to power, but, for years now, it has basked in becoming power in its own right. What worries me right now is that, as it continues to report out the spectacle, it has no structure for self-reflection, for understanding its weaknesses, its potential for manipulation."

- #DanahBoyd, 2016

https://points.datasociety.net/reality-check-de447f2131a3

#NewsMedia #FifthEstate