New paper: Modeling the amplification of epidemic spread by individuals exposed to misinformation on social media Simulations informed by social media data yield a worst-case bound on additional infections due to exposure to online vaccine misinfo. nature.com/articles/s4426…

Maintenance is finally complete! Botometer X and the rest of our tools are functioning properly again! 🎉

Paper alert! 🚨 We investigate Bluesky from an invitation only platform with a few thousands of users to reaching 30 million users in terms of user activity and network. 📄 Full paper: arxiv.org/abs/2504.12902 💻 Codes: github.com/osome-iu/rise_… 💾 Dataset: zenodo.org/records/150660…

Bluesky's growth was driven by key events: the public access launch, Brazil's ban on X, X's block policy change, and the US elections. Each event triggered significant user migrations and formed distinct communities.

Despite initial bursts and declines in total and average activity, Bluesky achieved a stable level of daily engagement, with around 15% active users after the US Elections, matching inactivity rates on X/Twitter (~85% lurkers).

Our analysis reveals that Bluesky rapidly developed a dense, highly clustered network structure. This "friend-of-a-friend" connectivity, characterized by strong hubs, enables swift and viral information diffusion, similar to established platforms such as Twitter/X and Weibo.

As Bluesky continues to mature, influential accounts are emerging, posing familiar risks of misinformation, abuse and toxicity on platform. Understanding these dynamics can help inform effective governance and moderation strategies moving forward.

Note that a toxic post is defined as a post with >.5 toxicity score from OpenAI moderation endpoint. platform.openai.com/docs/guides/mo…

All is done by my wonderful co-authors here! Filipi Silva, Bao Truong, Sangyeon Kim, Fan Huang, Nick Liu, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer, Observatory on Social Media

A clear analysis of the manufactured controversy that wrongly equates fighting misinformation with censorship How to Address Misinformation—Without Censorship time.com/7282640/how-to…

Our team just launched three new tools to help you explore social media data: 🌉NewsBridge – Adds AI-powered context to Facebook posts 🔎Barney’s Tavern – Search 34B social media posts 🌎OSoMeNet – Visualize how info spreads across platforms osome.iu.edu/research/blog/…

🚨 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭-𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫?🚨 We’re excited to share our new perspective paper: "Community Moderation and the New Epistemology of Fact Checking on Social Media" 📄 arxiv.org/pdf/2505.20067 w/

When the government cancels your research grant, here’s what you can do nature.com/articles/d4158…

Congress is on the verge of passing a dangerous proposal: a 10-year ban on protecting families from AI harms. Help protect our kids and stop this nightmarish proposal by acting now: p2a.co/ZWfY1cP

New preprint: How Malicious AI Swarms Can Threaten Democracy 🧪 osf.io/preprints/osf/…

The human response to the climate crisis is being obstructed and delayed by the production and circulation of misleading information about the nature of climate change and the available solutions. ipie.info/research/sr202…

The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel 404media.co/the-ai-slop-fi…

AI Chatbots Are Making LA Protest Disinformation Worse wired.com/story/grok-cha…

Most Americans believe misinformation is a problem — federal research cuts will only make the problem worse theconversation.com/most-americans…

Are you an early-career Italian computer scientist working in the US or Canada? Apply for the ISSNAF 2025 MARIO GERLA AWARD! 🧪 (Spread the word, please!) issnaf.org/2025-young-inv…