@julian @msbernst I think in practice, the small increase in upfront nerves caused by the push to post was short-lived. Because commit offered a warrant/justification for posting, people felt more comfortable in the act of posting and had the expectation of being supported/responded to by the rest of the group.

@julian @msbernst that’s a fair concern! We tried to address this in a few ways: first, there’s no punishment for not fulfilling a commitment. We have stronger messaging about remembering to commit versus fulfilling, and there’s an understanding that people might not have the ability or inclination to post always. It served more as a push to actually go through with sending something when people already had the inclination.

This paper argues that online spaces become ghost towns because it's too easy to lurk without contributing, and that asking people to regularly re-commit—or the incoming messages start getting muted—reverses the trend. arxiv.org/abs/2410.23267

It works! #cscw2024 paper by @lindsay

(7/7) Why would this matter? Small-group interactions are beneficial to users' mental health and wellbeing, by providing opportunities for social support and relationship-building. However, these groups often struggle to reach a sustainable activity level, where Commit can help.

(6/7) Participants treated sustaining the conversation as a shared responsibility of the group. Commitment served as an excuse for messaging, lowering the social risk. These effects then compounded, since one user participating lowered the threshold for others to join in.

(5/7) We found that Commit participants *doubled* their messaging activity without compromising quality. In fact, Commit participants had more interesting & deep conversations, growing closer with each other during the study. How did Commit achieve this effect?

(4/7) We then ran an evaluation with 57 participants in 12 groups (split between Commit and a control condition) interacting for three weeks. The control condition employed similar notification and banner reminders, but without messaging around commitment.

(3/7) We built Commit: a smartphone group messaging app built around the commitment mechanism. In Commit, people commit to messaging the group at least once every two days. Users are reminded to fulfill and renew their commitment with notifications and in-app banners.

(2/7) Our design asks group members to “commit”: explicitly promise to participate in discussion on a regular basis. Committing is a condition of membership: there is no "social loafing" option.

Have you ever worried that no one would respond to your message? Our #CSCW2024 paper proposes a commitment-based design in online groups to address this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23267 🧵

“Andreessen Horowitz is warning that billions of dollars in AI investments could be worth a lot less if companies developing the technology are forced to pay for the copyrighted data that makes it work.” Via neil turkewitz.

https://www-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.businessinsider.com/marc-andreessen-horowitz-ai-copyright-2023-11?amp

"A 91-year-old man honored by Israel for saving a Jewish life during the Nazi Holocaust has returned his medal in protest of the Gaza assault. Henk Zanoli was given Israel’s Righteous Among the Nations award for his actions under Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. In 1943, Zanoli smuggled out a Jewish boy and helped hide him in his home for two years, despite Nazi suspicion he and his family backed the resistance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7S77X9Sxx4

Let's talk about the "Weaponization of Government". As a researcher of disinformation, it's been both frustrating and enlightening to become the target of disinformation. The old playbooks for how to respond to this stuff (often advocating strategic silence) are broken. But we're just figuring out how to fight back. Here's my statement detailing how the House Judiciary Committee mischaracterized my voluntary service on an advisory committee to weave a false narrative: https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/08/23/starbird-house-judiciary-committee-report/

The House Judiciary Committee's interim report effectively punishes an academic researcher (and others) for volunteering to serve on an advisory committee — to try to help our country become more resilient to rumors, misinformation, and disinformation about elections. While they claim to be supporting "free speech", the report and related efforts function to chill speech — demotivating researchers like me from sharing what we know with government and social media platforms.

Every time someone talks to ChatGPT for 20 exchanges or so ...

... Microsoft's servers use a half-liter of freshwater to cool down

AI is *thirsty*

My essay on some implications of this: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e

A "friend" link, in case you don't subscribe to Medium: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e?sk=f5b2ea10c649a34236577139fecfd86a

I have a new paper! Together with r/worldnews on Reddit, I show how collective, good-faith human collaboration can steer algorithms to reduce the spread of unreliable news without needing to understand the underlying code.

The big challenge of this paper was to convince scientists that the question was worth asking at all — which took me SIX years.

Publishing the article required me to create a Rosetta stone for socio-technical science of human-algorithm behavior.

https://citizensandtech.org/2023/07/rosetta-stone/

(In case it's relevant, this would be the admit weekend for *computer science* phds)

Visit days for PhD Admissions are coming up!

I'm one of the co-chairs for Stanford's Admit Weekend and we're hoping to institute a code of conduct this year.

Does your institution already do this? We're planning to take some inspiration from CSCW's, but I'd be interested in seeing any specific to the context of visiting, admitted students.

Advice, resources, and boosts are welcome!

Despite the promise of AIs improving human decision making, a frustratingly resilient research result has found that people with AI decision-making aids are no better than people alone or AIs alone. Why? Overreliance: we go along with the AI's recommendations even when we shouldn't. Even when explainable AIs try to make it clear when the AI is wrong!

[CSCW paper thread]

@msbernst alternate villain arc (once you've achieved namesake of college dining hall) is to get really upset when the undergrads shorten the name and write an angry letter about it